Shohei Ohtani will be under close watch as he tries to move on from blister problem

The red flags for Shohei Ohtani, the warning signs that the blister on the middle finger of his pitching hand is starting to heat up, are obvious. The Angels right-hander will start looking at his fingers between pitches. He’ll get a little fidgety on the mound. His command will start to waver.

“We’re at a point where we’re secure and feel good enough that he’s going to go out there and it’s not going to be an issue,” Angels interim pitching coach Matt Wise said Tuesday afternoon, “but it’s going to be one of those things we monitor very closely and keep an eye on him.”

Ohtani will take the mound Tuesday night against the Texas Rangers in Angel Stadium, his first start since April 4, when his blister flared up against the Chicago White Sox and relegated the two-way star to only hitting for the next two weeks.

Ohtani will be on a limit of about 75 pitches and will not hit, the Angels not wanting to “scramble the rest of the night with a short bench if something went awry early,” manager Joe Maddon said.

Ohtani has had blister issues throughout his career, but he said Monday night that this blister was caused by the way he grips his four-seam fastball across the seams, not the split-fingered fastball, a pitch he grips by jamming the ball between his index and middle fingers.

“I used to get blisters on the inside part of my [middle] finger when I would throw the splitters, but nothing was forming from the splitter,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “It’s mainly the four-seamer.”

Ohtani is not about to scrap a four-seam fastball that touches 100 mph, but is there a way he can ease the stress on his middle finger when he throws his heater? Should he throw the pitch less often?

“I don’t think it’s a grip change, or a pitch usage change, it’s just getting to the point to where we can slowly but surely build up the tolerance on those fingers,” Wise said. “We think we’ve done that. It’s going to be something we have to be aware of moving forward, but he looks good and he’s ready to go tonight.”

Shouldering a burden

Scott Schebler will bat eighth and play right field against the Rangers, the reserve outfielder’s first start for the Angels since he was recalled from the team’s alternate training site Friday.

If he gets a chance to play regularly in place of injured right fielder Dexter Fowler and fails to produce, he won’t pin his struggles on the bum left shoulder that hampered him for almost four years and was surgically repaired in August 2019.

“Now that I’ve gone through surgery and all the rehab and understand my body a little more,” Schebler said this week, “I think it’s stronger than it was before.”

Schebler hit .233 with 30 homers and 67 RBIs in 2017 and .253 with 17 homers and 49 RBIs in 2018 for Cincinnati before slipping to .123 with two homers and seven RBIs in 30 games in 2019, when his shoulder was so sore he “had trouble picking up a bat and swinging without pain.” He played once for Atlanta last year.

The left-handed-hitting Schebler, 30, changed his swing and approach to compensate for the pain. It didn’t help. The doctor who performed surgery told Schebler he actually suffered a significant labrum tear in 2017.

“I have a football background and thought I could play through anything,” Schebler said. “Obviously I was wrong, especially in a sport like this, when you need every body part to be firing on all cylinders. … I have to know my body and understand that I can’t be a macho man and play with no shoulder.”

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.