Dodgers' Ohtani eyes 'being healthy the whole year,' shot at Cy Young - ESPN

PHOENIX — More than 450 media members, fans and other curious onlookers lined up along one of the backfields of the Los Angeles Dodgers' sprawling complex on Friday morning to catch a glimpse of Shohei Ohtani playing catch, then migrated to the space beside a nearby bullpen to watch him throw 27 pitches off a mound with noticeable intensity.

It marked the start of something — of spring training, yes, but, more notably, of Ohtani's return to a full-time two-way role.

Ohtani has just wrapped his first normal, fully healthy offseason since signing with the Dodgers in December of 2023. He's coming off a return to full-on starting pitching, in the wake of a second elbow surgery. And soon, he'll begin to juggle pitching and hitting over the course of an entire six- to seven-month season with a franchise universally lauded for its ability to extract the most out of players. The expectations, then, are preposterous, even for him.

And as the two-time-defending-champion Dodgers navigated their first official workout of 2026, two words dominated the conversation: Cy Young. It's the one major award Ohtani has not won. He was asked if it's a goal.

«If at the end, the result is getting a Cy Young, that's great,» Ohtani said, according to an interpreter. «Getting a Cy Young means being able to throw more innings and being able to pitch throughout the whole season, so if that's the end result, that's a good sign for me. What I'm more focused on is just being healthy the whole year.»

In between repairs of his ulnar collateral ligament, Ohtani went 34-16 with a 2.84 ERA while with the Los Angeles Angels from 2021 to 2023. In one of those years, 2022, he finished fourth in American League Cy Young Award voting.

Last year, his first one