LOS ANGELES — You could call it The Ohtani Quandary, amid the flying beer cans and security delays Sunday, but that seriously short-changes the unprecedented nature of Dodgers serial baseball abuser Shohei Ohtani.

A quandary hints at something perplexing.

Ohtani is the monster under the bed, torturing you in your sleep and grotesquely twisting diamond dreams into nightmares. You think about him when facing the bottom of the lineup. You think about him in terms of who’s on base.

You think about him over your Wheaties.

The Padres kept the hottest player in baseball quiet even as fans in left field threw a baseball or two toward its left fielder Jurickson Profar in the seventh inning, opening up a lengthy and scary delay.

That launched justifiably heated manager Mike Shildt into the outfield, barking at fans before beer cans began flying in the direction of Fernando Tatis Jr. in right.

The Padres held off Ohtani before the bedlam of a wild 10-2, four-base-circus win Sunday at Dodger Stadium that knotted a suddenly roiling series at a game apiece.

“What I got out of it,” said Shildt when asked about the seventh inning, “was a bunch of dudes that showed up in front of a big, hostile crowd with stuff being thrown at them and said, ‘We’re going to talk with our play. We’re not going to back down.’”

Not from the Dodgers. Not, under the right circumstances, from Ohtani.

All of it, despite the ridiculous line the seventh eclipsed and dangerous one it threatened obscured the things that stayed silent.

The one who stayed silent.

A day after Ohtani hit a three-run homer to change the script in Game 1, the Padres figured out a much better way to live their ballpark lives against a very big bat with very bad intentions.

The chaos that erupted Sunday only slowed a strategy and debate certain to crop up again in a series now gas-pedaled-stomped to 110 mph.

Do you attack and be aggressive in the playoffs, no matter the jersey, a decision that serves most well, most times? Or do you pitch differently in one player’s case, because Ohtani is different, and handle him with welder’s gloves?

Even if the first option defines your DNA, which is admirable against 99 percent of the players in the game, Ohtani is unlike all others. He is from Mars. The rest reside on Earth.

Shave your peril by maintaining a clean runway in front of him, though, as they did in Game 2, and side-stepping the Ohtani steamroller becomes something that limits the stomach somersaults.

As Padres’ postseason veteran Xander Bogaerts reasoned pregame: “Seems like he’s seeing everything like a balloon.”

Padres starting pitcher Yu Darvish struck out Ohtani to lead off the game Sunday and forced meek infield groundouts the next two trips as the offense pounded out runs to extend the leash.

In Game 1, they considered how much to play with fire.

In Game 2, they decided not to smoke cigarettes next to gas pumps.

By the time Ohtani ambled in with a runner on in the eighth inning, the Padres owned a commanding 7-1 cushion with a more comfy matchup against talented lefty reliever Tanner Scott.

“I think it was important,” Darvish said of Ohtani and beyond. “I felt like I had really good concentration on the mound, just going batter by batter, and just great focus.”

The second-inning outburst in Game 1 underscored the routinely cringy nature of the whole Ohtani mental exercise for the Padres.

When Will Smith walked and No. 7 hitter Gavin Lux singled, Ohtani came to the plate with one out, a double play in order and no base to house him. Unless you counted third as open, a la Barry Bonds.

A three-run lead can be a powerful drug.

Going at a talented player after bringing in solid left-hander Adrian Morejon two innings later also seemed like defendable baseball chess in a sport where the best produce outs more than two-thirds of the time.

Ohtani, though, is not just good or just a player.

So, which poison travels across the tongue easier?

“I couldn’t have slept any better with how that went down and the matchups we got in a tough situation,” said Shildt of the decision in the fourth, reminding that Morejon shattered Ohtani’s bat on a bloop single. “… He’s still human.”

Sometimes you wonder.

Numbers crunched by San Diego Union-Tribune reporter Kevin Acee showed Ohtani — 8 for 16 in his last four games against the Padres before Sunday — hit .630 with a 2.100 OPS with runners in scoring position since Sept. 11.

Some crunching of my own: In his last 11 games, Ohtani’s OPS coming in was 1.808, a pace that would obliterate all career OPS leaders from Babe Ruth (1.164) to Ted Williams, Lou Gehrig, Barry Bonds and anyone else who has clutched a bat.

He was not on a heater. He was on the surface of the sun.

As the ballpark calmed and emptied while the Padres hammered home runs, six in all, two by Tatis, a core question remained in its seat.

Do you really think Ohtani is done impacting this series?

Then again, Dodgers fans might want to stop throwing things long enough to ask the same thing about Tatis.

____

©2024 The San Diego Union-Tribune. Visit sandiegouniontribune.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.