Shohei Ohtani allows season-high 4 earned runs and falls behind Jacob Misiorowski in ERA race, but Dodgers finish sweep of Rays

It was a rough day at the office for Shohei Ohtani on Wednesday, by Shohei Ohtani’s standards. Which is enough to give him only the second-best ERA in baseball right now.

The Los Angeles Dodgers superstar allowed a season-high four earned runs in six innings against the Tampa Bay Rays on Wednesday, his second straight start with a season-high in earned runs allowed after giving up three to the Pittsburgh Pirates last Wednesday.

That’s enough to raise his ERA all the way up to, gasp, 1.47.

Ohtani was already invisible in the official ERA race as he isn’t making enough starts to get the innings needed to qualify for the title, but this start officially gives another starting pitcher a better mark than him. That would be Milwaukee Brewers flame-thrower Jacob Misiorowski at 1.34.

Misiorowski is the odds-on favorite for the NL Cy Young Award after throwing one of the best starts in MLB history on Friday, a 15-strikeout Maddux (shutout with fewer than 100 pitches) in which he faced the minimum, hit a record 104.5 mph and didn’t fall into a three-ball count. Philadelphia Phillies ace Cristopher Sánchez is the only other major contender on the Vegas leaderboard as of Wednesday.

All of Ohtani’s stumbles on Wednesday came in the fifth inning, on a rally former Dodger Hunter Feduccia sparked with a double. The Rays proceeded to squeeze out four runs via well-placed grounders and productive outs.

Tampa Bay hardly knocked him around but there’s a reason why Bob Gibson’s MLB-record 1.12 ERA from the Year of the Pitcher is considered untouchable. All it takes is one bad inning to go from a 1.00 ERA, where Ohtani was entering the frame, to well off the mark.

That rally didn’t prevent the Dodgers from recording the win and completing a three-game sweep of the Rays with a 5-4 win. Soon after the Rays took the lead, Freddie Freeman responded with a go-ahead two-run homer.

The Dodgers are now 48-27 and hold a nine-game lead in the NL West, while the Rays are 41-30 and three games back from the New York Yankees in the AL East.