Couple cooks up great date with a shopping trip in a Kia Sorento Hybrid

• February 21, 2025

A great date is even better when it starts with a great ride; just ask Ashley Rodriguez, an expert on creating fun dates in Southern California and beyond. Her tips and videos on social media as @firstdateguide highlight tasty restaurants, romantic getaways and fun experiences, earning her 1.4 million followers on TikTok and 157,000 on Instagram.

Rodriguez said she’s learned over the years that successful dates don’t have to be complicated or extravagant. For instance, she and her boyfriend Paul Castro (@paulsfoodhaul) recently had a great date making homemade pozole after a fun shopping trip in a 2025 Kia Sorento Hybrid.

The couple loved the quiet ride, powerful acceleration and great cargo space in the Sorento Hybrid, along with cool tech features like the available 24” combined Panoramic Displays with Navigation and Bose® Premium Audio System with Bluetooth.

Saving money on gas without sacrificing performance was another big plus, Rodriguez said. The Sorento Hybrid gets an EPA-estimated 36 MPG in city driving and has a turbo-hybrid powertrain with 227 horsepower and 258 lb-ft of torque — the kind of power that makes it easy to merge onto busy SoCal freeways.

“We’re constantly in a car and traveling all over, so feeling comfortable, enjoying the journey and knowing you’re getting great mileage makes a big difference,” she said.

To get what they needed for Castro’s homemade pozole, the couple visited a few stores, including their favorite bodega in Santa Ana, where parking can be a challenge. The Kia Sorento Hybrid’s available 360° Surround View Monitor helped take the guesswork out of maneuvering into tight spaces, Rodriguez said.

“I loved being able to see the cars around me and feeling confident that I had all the room I needed,” she said. The Sorento Hybrid also has an available Blind-Spot View Monitor that displays a live video feed of rear blind spots on the vehicle’s digital dashboard — a feature that helped the couple avoid a run-in with a stray shopping cart.

Once the shopping was complete, the Sorento Hybrid’s fold-down third-row seat left plenty of cargo space to hold all the supplies, and then some. The spacious hybrid-electric SUV has 75.5 cu.ft. of cargo room behind the first row of seats and up to 40 cu.ft. behind the second row.

“We live in a third-floor condo and use a fold-up cart to haul our groceries so we can avoid making multiple trips back and forth to the car,” Rodriguez said. “It was so nice to fit that cart and everything else we needed into the Sorento Hybrid, and still have room for more.”

She said she and Castro have been dating for five years and enjoy cooking together. Castro’s pozole — a hearty soup with cabbage, spices, fresh garlic, hominy, chicken and guajillo chilies — is their go-to recipe when the weather gets cold.

Rodriguez grew up in Southgate and started @firstdateguide in 2017 after graduating from California State University, Long Beach with a degree in communications. She initially focused on posting photos on Instagram, but expanded into video as TikTok was just taking off.

Rodriguez said her content appeals not just to couples, but to anyone who wants to have fun experiences with someone they love, whether it’s a friend, sibling, parent or grandparent.

“It’s really about being together and trying new things as a way to connect and feed your relationships,” Rodriguez said.

She and Castro practice what they preach, taking time to celebrate moments big and small. Sharing experiences together is what it’s all about, whether it’s a date night at home or enjoying time together on the road, she said.

“We recently started listening to audiobooks as a fun thing to do together when we’re driving,” Rodriguez said. “That’s another reason why we loved the quiet ride and amazing sound system in the Kia Sorento Hybrid. It made our date feel extra special.”

This article was produced by Skyline Studio, the in-house creative agency for Southern California News Group and The San Diego Union-Tribune. The editorial staff of SCNG and the U-T had no role in this post’s preparation.

​ Orange County Register 

Fryer: Snacks and fun put Santa Ana’s Serratos sisters on path to winning wrestling’s big prizes

• February 21, 2025

SANTA ANA – She was bribed with late-night snacks.

Anabelle Serratos’ father, Fernando, was coaching a wrestling club when she 7 years old. Anabelle would go along with her father to the club’s workouts, mostly to get some of the post-workout snacks and to play in the dodgeball games that were always part of the evening.

She watched the wrestlers and decided to give it a try. “It looked like a cool sport,” she recalls.

Then her sisters, Alicia and Angelica, started going to the workouts and also decided to pursue wrestling.

On Friday, Alicia, Anabelle and Angelica Serratos will wrestle for Santa Ana High School in the CIF Southern Section Masters Meet at Sonora High School in La Habra.

Alicia and Angelica Serratos won CIF Southern Section titles last week in the Eastern Division Individual Championships at Corona High. Anabelle, who is a sophomore, was a second-place finisher. The three Serratos sisters qualified for the Masters Meet, where the top eight finishers in each weight class advance to the CIF State Championships next week in Bakersfield.

Alicia is a senior and the oldest of the sisters. She wrestles in the 105-pound class and is 34-4 this season. Anabelle, who is 34-8 and was a CIF-SS champion last year, is in the 120-pound class. Freshman Angelica wrestles at 100 pounds and is 36-0.

Their parents, Fernando and Monica Serratos, are coaches for the Santa Ana girls wrestling team that finished second to Corona in the CIF-SS Eastern Division championships this past Saturday and won a CIF-SS Dual Meet championship two weeks ago,

Fernando was a CIF-SS divisional champion for Santa Ana wrestling in 1996 at 119 pounds and a CIF-SS divisional and CIF-SS Masters champion in ‘97 at 112 pounds.

Monica wrestled at Estancia before girls wrestling was a thing, and was the captain of the Estancia boys wrestling team. She wrestled at Golden West College, coached at Laguna Hills High and, like Fernando, has that walk and that posture that belongs to someone not to mess with.

“Anabelle is the one who spearheaded all of this,” Fernando said. “The ‘we’re all in’ in our family dynamics started with her.”

After Anabelle started wrestling, Angelica, often called “Cookie’ by her parents and sisters, got into the sport when she was 6.

“We’d go to my dad’s practices and watch it and play dodgeball,” Angelica said. “And one day Anabelle decided to try it and I saw her laughing and having fun. I decided to join and I fell in love with the sport.”

Although she is the oldest of the three sisters, Alicia was the last of them to pursue wrestling, getting into it when she was 9 years old.

“I should have been the first one,” Alicia said, “but I really wasn’t into sports growing up. Then my siblings started wrestling. It looked like fun and something I wanted to be part of.”

Tim Byers is head coach with Fernando for the Santa Ana girls wrestling program. He has been with Saints wrestling since 2010.

“I’ve had seven pairs of sisters wrestle for me here,” Byers said Wednesday in the Santa Ana girls wrestling room. “One year I had five pairs of sisters on the same team. But we’ve had nothing like the level that these three girls are at.

“They love the sport. They live for the sport.”

All athletes have a bond with others in their sport. Wrestling has that, too, but it’s different. A wrestler does not have a teammate there to compensate for an error, and most wrestlers appreciate what it took for their opponent to learn the technique, develop the stamina and courage required to succeed on the mat, and the battle to maintain weight to stay within a weight class while simultaneously building strength.

“Everyone in this sport puts in so much work,” Alicia said. “When you beat someone you’re crushing their dreams while achieving yours. Everyone in our sport understands the struggle that goes into our sport.”

It might seem a big deal to some that these three sisters, who all are high academic achievers, too, have qualified for the Masters Meet and are one step away from wrestling in the CIF State meet. Angelica, though, just shrugs that off.

“I’m kind of not surprised all three of us made it this far,” Angelica said. “We know our limits and we know how far we can go. When we all qualified for Masters it was like ‘Oh, whatever’ like it was just another day for us.”

Who is the best wrestler of the three sisters?

“My little sister, Cookie,” Anabelle said. “My older sister is not as athletic as we are. She doesn’t have the natural abilities. I have the athletic gifts, but I’m a little lazy in the sport. My little sister, she has the talent and the work ethic. During the summer she’ll do all of this extra work.”

So it’s hard on Angelica on the rare occasions she has lost in her middle-school and non-high school matches.

“When I lose it’s very heartbreaking,” Angelica said. “I know I worked super hard to get there. But sometimes I don’t wrestle my best and I know I could have done better.”

Wrestling runs in the Serratos family. That run could go all the way to the CIF State finals for three Serratos sisters next week.

​ Orange County Register 

Trump administration is flouting an order to temporarily lift a freeze on foreign aid, judge says

• February 21, 2025

By ELLEN KNICKMEYER and LINDSAY WHITEHURST

WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration has kept withholding foreign aid despite a court order and must at least temporarily restore the funding to programs worldwide, a federal judge said Thursday.

Judge Amir H. Ali declined a request by nonprofit groups doing business with the U.S. Agency for International Development to find Trump administration officials in contempt of his order, however.

The Washington, D.C., district court judge said administration officials had used his Feb. 13 order to temporarily lift the freeze on foreign aid to instead “come up with a new, post-hoc rationalization for the en masse suspension” of funding.

Despite the judge’s order to the contrary, USAID Deputy Secretary Pete Marocco, a Trump appointee, and other top officials had “continued their blanket suspension of funds,” Ali said.

The ruling comes in a lawsuit by the nonprofit groups challenging the Trump administration’s month-old cutoff of foreign assistance through USAID and the State Department, which shut down $60 billion in annual aid and development programs overseas almost overnight.

Even after Ali’s order, USAID staffers and contractors say the State Department and USAID still have not restored payments even on hundreds of millions of dollars already owed by the government.

Marocco and other administration officials defended the nonpayment in written arguments to the judge this week. They contended that they could lawfully stop or terminate payments under thousands of contracts without violating the judge’s order.

The Trump administration says it is now doing a program-by-program review of all State Department and USAID foreign assistance programs to see which ones meet the Trump administration’s agenda.

Aid organizations, and current and former USAID staffers in interviews and court affidavits, say the funding freeze and deep Trump administration purges of USAID staffers have brought U.S. foreign assistance globally to a halt, forced thousands of layoffs and is driving government partners to financial collapse.

​ Orange County Register 

IRS layoffs could hurt revenue collection and foil efforts to go after rich tax dodgers, experts say

• February 21, 2025

By FATIMA HUSSEIN

WASHINGTON (AP) — The layoffs of roughly 7,000 IRS probationary workers beginning this week likely mean the end of the agency’s plan to go after high-wealth tax dodgers and could spell disaster for revenue collections, experts say.

The majority of employees shown the door at the federal tax collector are newly hired workers focused on compliance, which includes ensuring that taxpayers are abiding by the tax code and paying delinquent debts, among other duties.

The IRS layoffs, one of the largest purges of probationary workers this year across the government, could also hurt customer service and tax return processing during tax season this year, the union representing Treasury Department employees warned Thursday.

The upheaval comes less than two months before the tax filing deadline and as the Department of Government Efficiency under Trump adviser Elon Musk seeks to shrink the size of the federal workforce in an effort to radically cut spending and restructure the government’s priorities.

Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center, said on a Thursday call with reporters that the layoffs at the IRS will disproportionately harm enforcement efforts.

“When you underpay and understaff the IRS, the agency doesn’t have the power or the resources it needs to go after wealthy tax evaders with their high priced lawyers,” she said, adding, “The result is, of course, a disaster for revenue.”

The Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law by President Joe Biden in 2022, gave the IRS $80 billion and the ability to hire tens of thousands of new employees to help with customer service and enforcement as well as new technology to update the tax collection agency, though congressional Republicans later clawed back some of the money.

Former IRS Commissioner Daniel Werfel, appointed by Biden, placed a particular focus on aggressively auditing high-income tax cheats as well as executives who use business aircraft for their personal use while still writing it off as a tax expense and wealthy people who sought to get favorable tax treatment through Puerto Rico without meeting certain tax requirements.

A Congressional Budget Office report issued last year describes how rescissions in funding for the IRS affect baseline projections of future revenues, offering a variety of scenarios depending on the severity of the cuts.

A $5 billion rescission would reduce revenues by $5.2 billion from 2024 to 2034 and increase the deficit by $0.2 billion. A $20 billion rescission would reduce revenues by $44 billion and increase the deficit by $24 billion for the same period. A $35 billion rescission would reduce revenues by $89 billion and increase the cumulative deficit by $54 billion.

“If you starve the IRS, you’ll be providing a feast for the tax evaders,” Williamson said.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said during his confirmation hearing last month that “we do not have a revenue problem in the United States of America, we have a spending problem.”

However, both revenues and spending will be an ongoing point of contention for congressional Republicans, who are trying to come up with how to pay for extending provisions of President Donald Trump’s Tax Cuts and Jobs Act. The Penn Wharton Budget model estimates that permanently extending Trump’s tax cuts would increase deficits by $4 trillion over the next decade.

Chye-Ching Huang, executive director of NYU’s Tax Law Center, called the layoffs “misguided” and said they “will hurt everyday Americans who pay their taxes and count on the IRS to pay refunds on time while encouraging wealthy people and large businesses to cheat on their taxes.”

Doreen Greenwald, president of the National Treasury Employees Union, said: “In the middle of a tax filing season, when taxpayers expect prompt customer service and smooth processing of their tax returns, the administration has chosen to decimate the whole operation by sending dedicated civil servants to the unemployment lines.”

The union representing IRS workers has already filed multiple legal challenges over the administration’s mass layoffs.

Mark Mazur, a former assistant secretary for tax policy at Treasury, said that since most of the laid-off workers were in the IRS’ small business and self-employment division, employees who had handled bigger corporate enforcement cases will be forced to stop their work and handle easier small-business cases.

“For sure this mean less enforcement activity,” and the deterrence effect of audits will be diminished, he said.

Representatives from Treasury, the IRS and the White House did not respond to Associated Press requests for comment on Thursday.

Associated Press writer Josh Boak in Washington contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

Senate ready to stay up all night to pass GOP budget over objections from Democrats

• February 21, 2025

By LISA MASCARO and KEVIN FREKING

WASHINGTON (AP) — Senators are ready to stay up all night, having launched a budget “vote-a-rama” late Thursday in a crucial, if dreaded, step toward unleashing a $340 billion package President Donald Trump’s team says it needs for mass deportations and security measures that top the Republican agenda.

If ever there was a time to watch Congress in action, this might be it. Or not. Senators will be voting in rapid fashion for hours on one amendment after another diving into intricate policy details, largely from Democrats trying to halt the package. The result will be a final push by the Republicans, expected in the early hours of the morning, to use their majority power to pass it on a party-line vote.

“What we’re doing today is jumpstarting a process that will allow the Republican Party to meet President Trump’s immigration agenda,” Senate Budget Committee chair Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., said while opening the debate.

Graham said Trump’s top immigration czar, Tom Homan, told senators that the administration’s deportation operations are “out of money” and need more funding from Congress to detain and deport immigrants.

With little power in the minority to stop the onslaught, Democrats will instead use the all-night debate to force GOP senators into potentially embarrassing votes — including the first one, on blocking tax breaks to billionaires. It was turned back, on procedural grounds.

“This is going to be a long, drawn out fight,” warned Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer.

“Days like today, where we vote on amendments late into the night, go a long way in revealing where each party stands and who each party is fighting for,” the New York senator said. “Democrats are glad to have this debate.”

The package that senators are pushing forward is what Republicans view as a down-payment on Trump’s agenda, part of a broader effort that will eventually include legislation to extend some $4.5 trillion in tax breaks and other priorities. That’s being assembled by House Speaker Mike Johnson in a separate budget package that also seeks up to $2 trillion in reductions to health care and other programs.

Trump has preferred what he calls one “big, beautiful bill,” but the White House is open to the Senate’s strategy of working on the border package first, then turning to tax cuts later this year.

As voting began, the president posted a thank you to Senate Majority Leader John Thune “and the Republican Senate, for working so hard on funding the Trump Border Agenda.”

What’s in the Senate GOP package

The Republican Senate package would allow up to $175 billion to be spent on border security, including money for mass deportation operations and building the U.S.-Mexico border wall, in addition to a $150 billion boost to the Pentagon and about $20 billion for the Coast Guard.

But even if the Senate pushed the package to approval in the all-night session, there won’t be any money flowing just yet.

The budget resolution is simply a framework that sends instructions to the various Senate committees — Homeland Security, Armed Services, Judiciary — to hammer out the details. Everything will eventually be assembled in another package, with another vote-a-rama, down the road.

Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the No. 2-ranking Senate Republican, said GOP lawmakers are acting quickly to get the administration the resources they have requested and need to curb illegal border crossings.

“The budget will allow us to finish the wall. It also takes the steps we need toward more border agents,” Barrasso said. “It means more detention beds… It means more deportation flights.”

Republicans insist the whole thing will be paid for, rather than piled onto debt, and they are considering various options with both spending cuts and new revenues.

The committees may decide to roll back the Biden administration’s methane emissions fee, which was approved by Democrats as part of climate change strategies in the Inflation Reduction Act, and hoping to draw new revenue from energy leases as they aim to spur domestic energy production.

Democrats are ready for battle

First up from Democrats will be a vote to prevent tax breaks for billionaires, according to a person familiar with the planning and granted anonymity to discuss it.

Democrats argue that the GOP tax cuts approved in 2017 flowed to the wealthiest Americans, and extending them as Trump wants Congress to do later this year would extend the giveaway.

Schumer launched a strategy earlier this week to use this first budget debate to focus on both the implications of the tax policy and also the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency, which is slashing across the federal government.

It’s a better approach for Democrats than arguing against tougher border security and deportations, which divides the party.

Sen. Patty Murray, the top Democrat on the Senate Appropriations Committee, said the single biggest driver of the national debt since 2001 has been a series of Republican-led tax cuts.

“And you’ll never guess what our Republican colleagues on the other side of the aisle are focused on right now, nothing to lower the cost of eggs, it’s actually more Republican tax cuts,” Murray said.

She called the budget plan a “roadmap for painful cuts to programs families count on each and every day, all so they can give billionaires more tax cuts.”

Congress is racing itself

The budget resolution is setting up what’s called the reconciliation process, which used to be rare, but is now the tool often used to pass big bills on party-line votes when one party has control of the White House and Congress, as Republicans do now.

But Republicans are arguing with themselves over how to proceed. The House is marching ahead on its “big, beautiful bill,” believing they have one chance to get it right. The Senate views its two-bill strategy as more practical, delivering on border security first, then turning to taxes later.

Budget rules allow for passage by a simple majority vote, which is key in the Senate where it typically takes 60 votes to break a filibuster on big items. During Trump’s first term, Republicans used the reconciliation process to pass GOP tax cuts in 2017. Democrats used reconciliation during the Biden presidency era to approve COVID-19 relief and the Inflation Reduction Act.

Trump appears to be stirring the fight, pitting Republicans in the House and Senate against each other to see which one delivers fastest.

Associated Press writers Matt Brown and Darlene Superville contributed to this report.

​ Orange County Register 

3 accused of Southern California robbery spree that ended in a shooting face slew of charges

• February 21, 2025

Two San Fernando Valley residents and a Long Beach man face a slew of charges in connection with a two-week crime spree across Los Angeles and Orange counties that ended with a doughnut shop employee firing his gun at the suspects.

A federal grand jury charged the defendants — a 36-year-old man and 49-year-old woman from North Hollywood and a 23-year-old man from Long Beach — with one count each of conspiracy to commit interference with commerce by robbery (the Hobbs Act), three counts of Hobbs Act robbery and one count of attempted Hobbs Act robbery, the U.S. Attorney’s Office announced on Thursday, Feb. 20.

The men have also been charged with an additional count of Hobbs Act robbery and four counts of brandishing a firearm in furtherance of a crime of violence, and the North Hollywood man also faces charges for reportedly being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition.

Between Jan. 29 and Feb. 14, the defendants are accused of robbing 12 businesses, including a smoke shop in Tustin; nine 7-Eleven stores in North Hollywood, Burbank, Torrance, Van Nuys, Long Beach, Glendale and Pasadena and two doughnut shops in Los Angeles and Downey.

Prosecutors allege many of the robberies happened late at night, when the men would enter each business, and, in some of the robberies, the North Hollywood woman would outside as a getaway driver.

During the crime spree, the North Hollywood man and woman allegedly fled to Las Vegas on Feb. 6, where they were married before they returned to California and committed another robbery on Feb. 8, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The spree ended after the trio attempted to rob a doughnut shop in Downey in the early hours of Valentine’s Day, according to court documents.

An employee told authorities he saw one of the men had a handgun in his front waistband, ran to the back kitchen area and grabbed his own firearm to defend himself. The employee fired at least one shot, hitting the wall behind the men and getting them to run out of the shop, the U.S. Attorney’s Office said.

Police witnessed the attempted robbery and pulled over a car with the three defendants and later found a firearm in the vehicle, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office.

The defendants, who have been in federal custody since last year. will be arraigned in coming weeks. A trial is scheduled to begin on May 6.

If convicted of all charges, the defendants face up to 20 years in federal prison for each violation of the Hobbs Act. The men face a minimum sentence of seven years in federal prison for each count of brandishing a firearm during a crime of violence, and the charges of being a felon in possession of a firearm and ammunition carry up 15 years in federal prison each.

The charges are part of a superceding indictment following some initial charges that were filed against the trio in May 2024.

​ Orange County Register 

Texas AG asks court to require NCAA to begin gender testing as part of new transgender policy

• February 21, 2025

LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — The Republican attorney general in Texas wants the NCAA to take its transgender policy a step further and require gender testing for athletes who compete in women’s sports.

AG Ken Paxton filed a lawsuit in December in state district court and on Thursday added a filing that seeks a court order requiring gender screening for athletes and an injunction intended to prevent the NCAA from “falsely and deceptively claiming that only biological women may participate in female-specific competitions.”

Earlier this month, the NCAA changed its participation policy for transgender athletes, limiting competition in women’s sports to athletes who were assigned female at birth. The move came a day after President Donald Trump signed an executive order intended to ban transgender athletes from women’s and girls’ sports.

Paxton doesn’t think the NCAA move goes far enough because, saying the NCAA has no mechanism for screening the sex of athletes.

“In practice, the NCAA’s lack of sex-screening has allowed (and will continue to allow) biological men to surreptitiously participate in ‘women’s’ sports categories,” the lawsuit claims.

Over the past year, transgender athletes have become a target of critics who say their participation in women’s sports is unfair and a potential safety risk. The topic became a major talking point in Trump’s re-election campaign even though there is believed to be a very small number of transgender athletes; NCAA President Charlie Baker in December said he knew of only 10 transgender athletes out of more than 500,000 across the NCAA.

The NCAA’s revised policy permits athletes assigned male at birth to practice with women’s teams and receive benefits such as medical care. An athlete assigned female at birth who has begun hormone therapy can practice with a women’s team but cannot compete on a women’s team without risking the team’s eligibility for championships.

Paxton also said the NCAA has left “ample opportunity for biological men to alter their birth records and participate in women’s sports,” a claim the organization said is not true.

“The policy is clear that there are no waivers available, and student-athlete assigned male at birth may not compete on a women’s team with amended birth certificates or other forms of ID,” the NCAA said in an emailed response to The Associated Press.

Member schools — there are 1,100 in the NCAA — are responsible for certifying athlete eligibility for practice and competition. Local, state and federal legislation can supersede NCAA rules.

Paxton’s filing refers to last week’s announcement by World Athletics that part of its new recommended guidelines would bring back gender testing, a practice that hasn’t been part of track and field since the 1990s. Most of the screenings can be done by swabbing the inside of an athlete’s cheek.

AP sports: https://apnews.com/sports

​ Orange County Register 

Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani exploring options with pitching mechanics

• February 21, 2025

GLENDALE, Ariz. — Something will look different about Shohei Ohtani when he goes back to pitching in games and it won’t just be the Dodgers uniform.

During his first two bullpen sessions this spring, Ohtani has thrown primarily out of the windup. During his days pitching for the Angels, Ohtani almost exclusively pitched out of the stretch.

“Traditionally, I’ve been throwing from the stretch a lot,” Ohtani said through his interpreter on Thursday. “But as part of being a baseball player, I do want to explore different options, different avenues, to see if I could grow as a player. I do that on the pitching side as well as as a hitter.”

Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes said it was not something suggested by the team “but I imagine he’s just trying to get some rhythm and feeling for his arm stroke in a better way.”

Ohtani said he plans to continue using the windup and take it into games when he reaches that stage.

“But again, with increasing the intensity, I do want to see how the body responds, how I respond to it,” he said. “So yes, as of now, that’s the plan.”

Ohtani is not expected to make his post-surgery pitching debut with the Dodgers until some time in May and the only games he will participate in before then are likely to be simulated games. The Dodgers do not plan to have Ohtani pitch in Cactus League games or go on a minor-league rehab assignment before he returns to MLB as a pitcher.

“There’s some complicating factors,” Gomes said. “Looking at the schedule, we have a general sense of what we’d like to do right now. But obviously once we get there, (we will) continue to talk to Sho and build him up so that – he’s not going to be able to go on a rehab assignment – he feels as prepared as possible when he goes into a regular game.”

Ohtani actually could go on a rehab assignment as a pitcher while staying in the Dodgers’ lineup at DH. MLB added that rule for two-way players when Ohtani was returning from his first Tommy John surgery in 2020. The pandemic led to the cancellation of the minor-league season and the Angels never put it to use.

Gomes said the Dodgers have not even looked into using the rule because they anticipate using simulated games alone to get Ohtani ready to return.

“I think a lot of that will be conversations with Sho,” Gomes said. “But I think understanding that these (sim) games will be treated as your rehab games, there will be an inherent uptick in effort. And if he isn’t getting out of those what he needs, then we can pivot. But that will be the plan right now and we’ll see how it’s landing with him, how he’s feeling and if we need to make an adjustment we certainly will.”

SHO STARTER

Mookie Betts batted first in Thursday’s Cactus League opener against the Chicago Cubs, but Roberts said Ohtani will go back to the leadoff spot once the DH is ready to hit in games.

Betts started last season as the Dodgers’ leadoff hitter with Ohtani second. But Ohtani moved into the leadoff spot when Betts was hit by a pitch and suffered a fractured hand in mid-June. Ohtani stayed there for the rest of the season.

This year, Roberts said he plans to go with Ohtani, Betts, Freddie Freeman and Teoscar Hernandez, in that order, at the top of the lineup.

“I think it just makes the most sense and is the hardest to navigate (for opposing teams),” Roberts said. “It gives Shohei five at-bats a night.”

KERSHAW CONTRACT

When Clayton Kershaw re-signed with the Dodgers last week, it was a one-year deal with a base salary of only $7.5 million. But Kershaw could earn up to $16 million in 2025 if he reaches the bonus levels included in the contract, according to The Associated Press.

Kershaw will get $1 million each for making 13, 14, 15 and 16 starts. The three-time Cy Young Award winner will receive an additional $2.5 million for being on the active roster for 30 days and an additional $1 million each for being on the active roster for 60 and 90 days.

Kershaw had surgery on his left foot and knee in November and is not expected to make his season debut until May at the earliest. Last year, he didn’t pitch for the Dodgers until July after undergoing shoulder surgery the previous fall. He made only seven starts before the pain in his foot ended his season at the end of August.

He averaged 27 starts per season in the 15 full seasons before last year.

​ Orange County Register