The most expensive medical chart in baseball arrived at the Division Series with a disclosure attached. Shohei Ohtani said the left knee and right biceps ailments that compromised him throughout the summer are issues he is "just going to have to manage" in the postseason.

Read that sentence slowly. Managing is what you do with a mortgage or a difficult relative. Ohtani is applying it to the two body parts a hitter and a pitcher most need to be on speaking terms with.

It is a rare thing for a player this central to say out loud in the first week of October. Teams guard injury news like a recipe, and the Dodgers have just handed over the ingredient list. The two-time defending champions do not appear to think it matters much, which is its own kind of confidence.

The confidence has a name. Tarik Skubal gets the ball in Game 1 against the Atlanta Braves on Saturday, and the Braves, per ESPN, were still sorting through their options. A club with a hurt superstar and an ace to start Game 1 is in better shape than one with neither, and Los Angeles knows which of those it holds.

Here is the arithmetic that matters. A short series asks every lineup to survive a handful of games, and a three-peat asks it to survive three rounds. A player who has to manage his knee and his biceps through all of them is a variable no schedule can control.

Ohtani told everyone the truth. Now the Braves get to decide whether it matters.