Dodgers are easing Ohtani back into pitching, essentially completing his rehab while in the majors. “There’s no playbook for this,” said GM Brandon Gomes.

LOS ANGELES — Shohei Ohtani’s first game on the mound with the Dodgers was a short one, pretty much as expected. He was a little rusty, which could have been expected in his first game on the mound in 663 days.

Ohtani allowed a run on two hits in the first inning of Monday night’s 6-3 win over the Padres. He fell behind with four three-ball counts and needed 28 pitches to complete the frame. It looked a little like a rehab appearance in part because it was, just one that happened to be against a major league team.

“There’s no playbook for this, so it has to be an ongoing conversation, and making sure that Shohei is the one driving it,” Dodgers executive vice president and general manager Brandon Gomes said earlier Monday.

Ohtani’s rehab from September 2023 Tommy John surgery was slow and methodical, and only started to ramp up in the last three weeks. He first faced hitters on May 25 when the Dodgers were in New York to play the Mets, and he pitched three such simulated games prior to Monday.

“The stuff was really impressive,” Gomes said. “The movement and command combination, and the interplay of his pitches felt like — what he was doing in bullpens early on, you could just put that into a game and you would feel good about it.”

The plan for Ohtani to pitch in a major league game was finalized over the weekend.

“It was more like, ‘I don’t think there’s anything else to do, I’m ready to go, what else do I need to do to get on a major league mound?’,” Roberts said of his two-way star. “If it’s going to be an inning or two, it’s like, ‘Well, I’ve already done that. So can I pitch now?’ And you gotta hear the player, trust the player.”

The Dodgers with Ohtani have a balancing act of making sure his pitching rehab was going well while also having his MVP-level bat in the lineup every single game. MLB rules do allow for two-way players to play in a minor league rehab game while still on the active major league roster, with commissioner approval, but having Ohtani pitch somewhere in the minors would likely mean missing at least one or two major league games, plus factoring in the potential burden of travel for each such occurrence.

The solution this season had been bullpen sessions, roughly weekly, since the domestic regular season began. But even those proved onerous, with Ohtani’s pitching rehab occurring five or more hours before a game he was expected to play in as a hitter.

“We got to the point where it feels like we should take that next step, and almost finish the rehab at the major league level, because of the taxing nature of what he was doing,” Gomes said. “So much of it the getting hot, throwing a live (batting practice) at 1:30, two o’clock, cooling down, then coming back and getting ready to lead off a game. I can’t even imagine how taxing that is.”

So Ohtani will continue to work his way back to a full-length starter in increments, with — like handfuls of other pitchers on the staff — the hope of being ready come October.

The exact timing of Ohtani’s next start will depend on how he feels after Monday’s game, during which he threw one pitch at 100.2 mph and another at 99.9.

“I did hit 100 today, so I first want to see how my body feels and how it reacts,” Ohtani said, through interpreter Will Ireton. “But yes, the expectation is for me to go once a week, hopefully to go a little longer each time, so the bullpen won’t be as taxed.”

In the near term, while Ohtani’s outings are shorter, he’s essentially an extra reliever. Only as a two-way player, he doesn’t count against the 13-pitcher limit on the active roster. So sprinkling in Ohtani once or so per week gives the Dodgers a fresh arm, but doesn’t require sending another pitcher out. On a team with 14 pitchers on the injured list, every little bit helps.

“It’s not going to be a once-every-five-days situation, so there’s going to be plenty of time to recover,” Roberts said. “We also have the luxury of pitching him as much as we want, in a particular outing, because it’s additive as far as our roster.”

“The beauty is these are free innings,” Gomes said, “and it doesn’t come at the cost of anything.”

Ohtani’s inning on the mound was not only the start of his Dodgers pitching career, but also only a small sliver of Monday’s game.

Even after he was done pitching, Ohtani remained in the game as the designated hitter as rules for two-way players allow. He had run-scoring hits in both the third and fourth innings.

It wasn’t yet the fully-operational two-way Ohtani, but it least provided a glimpse of what the Dodgers hope will come. There was an anticipation in the air at Dodger Stadium on Monday, from the eerily-quiet crowd in between Ohtani pitches, to his excited teammates on the top step of the third base dugout watching his return to the mound.

“He’s the best player on the planet. I think everyone can kind of admire that,” Roberts said. “These players, myself, and you guys, we’re baseball fans first, and we’re fans too. Just to be able to see a teammate be able to take this on, the physical, the talent, the psychology of it, this is a big undertaking. As people say, he’s a unicorn.”

I’m not really sure how two-way Ohtani will play out, despite three epic years of evidence in Anaheim that amazing things are possible. But one thing is clear — Ohtani wants to keep trying, and the Dodgers are fully on board, however bumpy the ride might be.

“We signed him to be a two-way player, and he’s very much of the mindset that he wants to do that for a very long time,” Gomes said. “We’re ready to take that step.”