A Brief Scouting Report on Shohei Ohtani’s Debut
Angels righty Shohei Ohtani, who appeared first overall on our recent top-100 prospect list, made his spring debut on Saturday at Tempe Diablo Stadium against the Milwaukee Brewers. He threw 1.1 innings, surrendered two hits (including a solo homer to Brewers OF Keon Broxton on a fastball, up), walked one, and struck out two. Ohtani was removed after he threw 31 pitches (17 for strikes) because he had reached his pitch-count limit.
Ohtani struggled to find a consistent release point during his brief outing, which is of little concern given that he barely pitched last year and this was his first spring-training appearance. A source at the game had Ohtani’s fastball ranging 91-97 mph. He threw all of his secondary pitches, the best of which was a plus to plus-plus splitter in the 84-88 mph range. He also threw one knee-buckling, change-of-pace curveball at 70 mph and a few sliders in the 79-80 mph range.
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Other pro scouting notes
Rockies SS prospect Brendan Rodgers homered in the big-league spring-training game Friday on a ball that left the bat at 102 mph. He hit a ball 105 earlier in the game.
Cleveland 1B prospect Bobby Bradley singled today on a ball that left the bat at 109.5 mph.
D-backs righty Taylor Clarke was 91-94 with an average curveball in a scrimmage against Arizona State on Wednesday.
Eric Longenhagen is from Catasauqua, PA and currently lives in Tempe, AZ. He spent four years working for the Phillies Triple-A affiliate, two with Baseball Info Solutions and two contributing to prospect coverage at ESPN.com. Previous work can also be found at Sports On Earth, CrashburnAlley and Prospect Insider.
Glad he’s made it to the Show…HAY!!!!!!!!!!!!
Just neighing.
Isn’t 91-97 pretty disappointing? Obviously it is a good FB, but in the last years we read about triple digits. Or is it normal that early in ST velos are lower?
Correct, velocity tends to increase up through the summer months as pitchers strengthen and the temperatures climb
Given how little he pitched last year, he is probably not really trying to air it out quite just yet either.
Love the short reports out of spring training; much more interesting than scanning the box scores. Hope to read more in the future!
these are great
the splitter looks very promising
This was very disappointing. There is a much better breakdown at PitcherList for those interested.