Ohtani Might Be Better Than We Thought
A couple weeks ago, I asked my colleague Jeff Zimmerman to help me find some Shohei Ohtani comps and make a projection for Ohtani based upon the Davenport Translations of his 2016 NPB stats. Remember, Ohtani missed much of last season due to ankle and thigh injuries. Per Davenport, Ohtani’s 2016 numbers equate to the following MLB performance as a then-age-21 hitter: 324 at-bats, 14 home runs, 34 walks, 89 strikeouts, a .306/.367/.512 slash line, and 133 wRC+. He’s 23 now.
I was trying to answer whether Ohtani would produce more relative value as a DH in the AL or as a pitcher not only batting but also pinch-hitting in the NL. (And, yes, he might end up playing in the field in the NL.)
Here’s the full list of performance comps Zimmerman provided for Ohtani the Hitter:
2016 Comps
Adrian Beltre
Aledmys Diaz
Tyler Naquin
Hanley Ramirez
Corey Seager
Andrew Toles
2017 Comps
Jorge Alfaro
Robinson Chirinos
Lonnie Chisenhall
Adam Lind
Domingo Santana
George Springer
Eric Thames
2018 Comps (via Steamer Projections)
Mookie Betts
Charlie Blackmon
Carlos Correa
Aaron Judge
Yasiel Puig
George Springer
That’s pretty impressive company for a player about whose bat there’s more uncertainty than his arm. Moving on, Zimmerman also provided comps based on Ohtani’s translated rates of 9.2 strikeouts and 2.9 walks per nine over 180 innings. Zimmerman forecast a 3.4 WAR for Ohtani’s age-23 season.
Jeff’s pitcher 2018 pitcher projection comps off those translations also were generally good — Drew Hutchison alert! — but not quite the elite ace level many might be expecting.
2014 Comps
Gerrit Cole
Jacob deGrom
Gio Gonzalez
Drew Hutchison
Ian Kennedy
Jake Odorizzi
2015 Comps
Mike Fiers
Cole Hamels
Ian Kennedy
Carlos Martinez
Lance McCullers
2016 Comps
Daniel Norris
Carlos Rodon
2017 Comps
Jon Lester
David Price
2018 Comps (via Steamer Projections)
Luis Castillo
Jon Gray
Jimmy Nelson
James Paxton
Luke Weaver
Overall, based on the 2018 forecasts, Ohtani is impressive. Pair James Paxton and George Springer together, or Charlie Blackmon and Jimmy Nelson, or Mookie Betts and Jon Gray and you have a comp for Ohtani. That’s a heckuva player. Not a player who is Ruthian, necessarily, but the best two-way major leaguer since Babe Ruth.
Projecting off of the translated statistics, we finished with a 5.2 WAR forecast based on 180 innings and 400 plate appearances as a DH. Not bad! Only 25 major leaguers were worth five or more wins last season, though that forecast falls below the incredible expectations Ohtani is towing across the Pacific.
Dan Szymborski created his own projection and it was more muted in expectation. Szymborski’s ZiPS system calls for a 3.55 ERA, 139 innings, 122 hits, 61 walks, and 161 strikeouts from Ohtani.
Zimmmeran also sought comparables off of the ZiPS projection. Here are those comps: Tyler Glasnow (!), Luiz Gohara, Dinelson Lamet, and Alex Reyes.
Now here’s the ZiPS projected batting slash line: .266/.328/.466. And the comps based on that: Maikel Franco, Matt Kemp, and Evan Longoria.
Even a Glasnow-Franco combination would represent a unique talent, especially in light of Ohtani’s youth. Nevertheless, it would also be a disappointment — not only to this author but also the team that wins the Ohtani sweepstakes.
The forecasts are fun because there’s an element of mystery surrounding Ohtani. But thanks to Trackman data and first-rate investigation by FanGraphs alum and MLB.com stalwart Mike Petriello, there is now less mystery regarding what Ohtani is and might become. The Trackman data verifies that Ohtani has otherworldly talent and makes the above pitching translation — and many of the comps — seem extremely conservative.
The NPB Trackman data found Ohtani maxed out at 101.6 mph last season and that he averaged 97.5 mph with his fastball. It’s also a fastball with an above-average spin rate (2,301 rpms). While Ohtani didn’t pitch much in 2017, one also don’t require a large sample for velocity to stabilize. Good luck with that pitch up in the zone, MLB hitters.
Wrote Petriello:
In terms of maximum velocity, 101.6 is pretty close to being off the charts. If we round up to 102 mph, we can see that over the three seasons of Statcast™, only a dozen pitchers have reached that mark. Many of them did it just once or twice; 80 percent of those pitches belong to Aroldis Chapman alone. If we narrow it just to starting pitchers, we’ll see 102 mph just four times in three years, from Nathan Eovaldi and Noah Syndergaard.
Petriello placed a Luis Severino comp on Ohtani’s fastball due to its velocity and spin. Severino’s fastball averaged 97.5 mph. In the PITCHf/x era, only three starting pitchers to throw at least 30 innings in a season have averaged better than 97 mph with their fastball. All three instances occurred last year: Severino, Syndergaard (98.9 mph), and Castillo (97.5)
As with Syndergaard, we might wonder whether Ohtani throws too hard to maintain long-term health and effectiveness. But the elite velocity is as advertised and we haven’t even addressed his offspeed and breaking stuff. He’s regarded as having three plus pitches and repeatable mechanics that should result in above-average command.
Ohtani’s power as a hitter also looks very real: he produced a max exit velocity of 111.1 mph, which is rare. (His ability to contact major-league pitching is the biggest question.)
Wrote Petriello:
If we look at Ohtani’s averages by batted ball type, we see some interesting names as comparables. On 31 tracked fly balls, his average exit velocity was 94.3 mph, with a maximum of 110.7 mph. The Major League-average exit velocity on fly balls was 91.2 mph, so Ohtani has that beat, and of the 375 hitters who had at least 25 fly balls, his 94.3 would have ranked 50th, or in the top 13 percent.
That’s very similar to Freddie Freeman, Yoenis Cespedes and Joc Pederson, and Pederson seems like a pretty good comp, as a young left-handed bat with big power and high strikeout numbers.
We don’t know if Ohtani will stay healthy as a pitcher. We don’t know if he’ll have a manageable strikeout rate as a hitter. But the raw ability, the underlying skills, are elite. The Trackman data verifies his skill level. It’s hard evidence that he warrants status as a two-way player.
And for your enjoyment, some recycled GIFs I made earlier this spring, including this blur of a fasball:
And how about this location?
He has a plus breaking ball:
And has added a changeup:
The power always looked real and now it’s been verified:
Ohtani’s arrival in the majors will result in perhaps the most anticipated debut in major North American pro sports since that of LeBron James some 15 years ago. Most prospects who are hyped to this level fail to reach stratosphere-high expectations. But the rarest of talents can match and exceed the hype. LeBron did it. And Trackman data verifies that Ohtani, while still something of a mystery, is very much for real.
A Cleveland native, FanGraphs writer Travis Sawchik is the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Big Data Baseball. He also contributes to The Athletic Cleveland, and has written for the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, among other outlets. Follow him on Twitter @Travis_Sawchik.
baseball porn
This was a red herring article just to show that Drew Hutchinson is going to be the next big thing in Japan right?
At least Drew Hutchison looked like a pitcher you could have in your rotation in 2014?
Everybody knows that Babe Ruth went from great pitcher to great hitter but there have been a couple of others of note. Smoky Joe Wood, winner of 34 games for the Red Sox in 1912, stopped pitching at the age of 25 then returned a couple of years later as an outfielder for five years with Cleveland and had a .283 lifetime average. Clint Hartung pitched for the NY Giants in the late 40’s then spent a couple of years as a reserve outfielder, with little success. Does anybody know of any player who actually did both in the same season, except Ruth in 1918 and 1919.
Also that one year (1944) Dizzy Trout went off and had an 11 win season between pitching to an insane record in an insane amount of inningd and also batting pretty well.
When the comparables are named Smokey and Dizzy I think we are reaching a bit…
He was a good hitting pitcher but never played in the field.
Rick Ankiel is an obvious recent comp, though he was never both a pitcher and position playing hitter at the same time.
Before his psychological block that caused periodic wildness, he was an absolutely elite pitching prospect. In 2000, he put up 3.4 fWAR in 175 innings as a 21 year old.
When he made it back to the majors as an outfielder, he put up about a 120 wRC+ in his first 650 PA’s across 2007-2008. Lots of power, with 36 HR’s and about a .245 ISO in those first two seasons, but OBP’s that were around league average . He dropped off quite a bit as a hitter after 2008.
“Both Rick Ankiels at once” is an interesting comp for Ohtani.
A true tragedy! What a talent!
The Paxton comparable is interesting, as he could very well end up being his teammate. But what’s incredibly fascinating, at least for me, is the possibility that we’ll be seeing a single human being doing something that we’ve never seen before and may never see again with the same dominance.
#DrewHutchisonAlert
Luiz Gohara
:(:(:(
Just gonna put it out there that Ohtani strikes out a lot for a hitter in Japan, and he’s almost certainly not going to hit every day (day before and after starts he’ll get a day off) so he might not adjust as quickly.
In theory, Davenport’s adjustment should take care of all that, but I don’t know how it works so I’m skeptical. At the minimum, his offensive style seems a lot more like Domingo Santana than Adrian Beltre.
If I’m a team I’m promising him a chance to hit because otherwise I have no shot, but the strikeouts are a huge red flag for me. And who knows, maybe he hits like Joey Gallo and I’m super happy about it.
I understand the hype of Ohtani–and I’m very excited to watch him play stateside–but is he really more hyped as a prospect than Bryce Harper or Stephen Strasburg or Mark Prior? Harper was supposed to be the next Mickey Mantle, with some preferring him to Mike Trout even after Trout’s 10+ WAR rookie season. And Strasburg was considered potentially the best pitching prospect of all-time, before which Mark Prior was assigned a similar label.
I’m not saying this isn’t a humongous event (or that Ohtani won’t be a great player), but it seems that we quickly go to hyperbole in describing players who are extremely talented but haven’t been had a chance to consistently perform against the best talent in the world.
Mike Trout had too much WAR in his rookie season. Mike Trout’s WAR should have been redistributed to other players on his team. Get it? ‘cuz Bernie…I’ll just wait for the down votes.
lol nothing funnier to me than knowing exactly what’s coming but doing it anyways
“You gotta be bleeping me”
Get the ChiSox out of your handle if you’re going to run around being embarrassing.
Yeah, I think that Travis was a bit over the top in saying most-hyped since LeBron across North American sports. Andrew Luck was incredibly hyped: remember the “suck for Luck” idea among fanbases of bad NFL teams that had a shot at the #1 overall draft pick when he’d be available? Sidney Crosby was hugely hyped before the 2005 NHL Draft.
If Ohtani shows in spring training and the first few months of next season that he actually looks like something close to a 130 wRC+ hitter and 3 or 4 WAR pitcher, then I think that he’ll remain a huge story as a true two-way player with his team trying to find ways to get him more PA’s either in the AL or the NL. If, however, he looks more like a league average hitter or somewhat below, then I think that the hype will subside to a similar level as for a “normal” really good baseball rookie.
On the other hand, since the live ball era began, only one pitcher (Wes Ferrell) has had a career wRC+ of (exactly) 100 (1000 PA minimum). The highest since WWII is 81 (Bob Lemon), or 87 for Don Newcombe with 988 PA. Ohtani doesn’t have to be a very good hitter to be an historically great hitting pitcher.
Sure.
Probably should have said that I think that the hype would subside in part because if, he’s that level hitter, then I think that teams will back away from going through gyrations to get him a lot of playing time on days when he doesn’t pitch.
If he’s in the NL, 90 to 100 wRC+ makes him a great hitting pitcher, though Bumgarner has averaged that over the past four seasons and Wainwright has been about 90 wRC+ for the past two. That level is good enough that I could see an NL team allowing him to pinch hit fairly regularly if that’s what he wants to do. Using him that way adds some flexibility in the NL game by conserving other bench players. I don’t see, though, why a team would take the injury and fatigue risk of something like playing him in the outfield regularly.
In the AL, it would be really tough for teams to justify going to great lengths to get him PA’s at DH if he’s that poor of a hitter. Again, I think the other background is that, other than humoring Ohtani, there’s no logic to taking the risk that he gets hurt hitting or running the bases if some other player can hit as well or better than a team’s 3+ WAR starting pitcher.
We need a poll article regarding Ohtani’s value in 2018 and career, so we can all laugh at ourselves for being way off one way or the other.
Rick Ankiel – how quickly we forget
I’m actually a bit disappointed by his max exit velo, I read guys talking about aaron judge like power. 111 is a good ev if you can do it somewhat regularly but judge hit like 5 balls above 120 mph. Many guys can hit one ball at 111, like hernandez did it once last year.
The average HR EV is about 104 if I recall it correctly.
his max EV would be only like 150th or so last year, bumgarner actually hit one harder.
He certainly does have power of course (even though Japanese stadiums inflate power) but I wouldn’t see him as a 70 raw guy from those stats.
The 94 on flyballs is probably above average but again not elite, judge and stanton averaged 100 on fb/ld
https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/statcast_leaderboard?year=2017&abs=10&player_type=resp_batter_id
That should certainly be enough power to hit 30 hr though, but if the data are comparable it is not off the charts power.
Maybe there is a reason why eric ranked him not top100 as a hitter (he also had some contact issues whiffing 27% against Japanese pitching) although he also had decent walk rates.
But then again I heard other prospect guys being higher than eric on him and giving his bat a 60.
You can’t argue with the results, a 950+ ops against AAA equivalent pitching at age 21/22 is impressive even though the Ks issues against the softer tossing pitchers are a bit concerning. He definitely is a hitting prospect but most are much higher on his pitching even though eric might be the most extreme here.
His OPS in age 21-22 seasons in Japan is completely comparable to what Ichiro did, and also Matsui. Because of his power, he seems more in the mold of Matsui, who was actually a better hitter than Ichiro, both in Japan and in the U.S. Keep in mind that Matsui had a 128 wRC+ in the U.S., and he didn’t start over here until he was 29. Most of his Anerican career was played while he was in decline. Granted, Matsui’s K-rate in Japan was much better than Ohtani’s.
“Projecting off of the translated statistics, we finished with a 5.2 WAR forecast based on 180 innings and 400 plate appearances as a DH.”
Nothing in Ohtani’s past suggests he can carry this kind of workload; anyone who’s taken even a cursory look at the way he was used in Japan knows this. He’s always taken a minimum three full days of rest for each day on the mound; even if he cuts that to two days, 400 AB is still not possible.
If you’re going to replace actual analysis with wishcasting, why not assume 220 IP and 600 PA?
http://m.cubs.mlb.com/news/article/262573300/cubs-would-love-to-add-shohei-ohtani-to-roster/
400 AB may not be possible, but 400 PA is.
But then again, you do have a point.
400 PA as DH does seem close to impossible.
Yeah, I’m seeing a max of 104 games as a hitter (in 2016) at his Baseball Reference page. That was in a 140 game season, but my understanding is that he only pitched once per week with Japanese teams using 6 man rotations and having a set off-day each week. He only started 20 games as a pitcher that year, for example. In his other four seasons, he maxed out at 87 games as a hitter with 234 PA’s.
I’m similarly skeptical about the idea that an NL team would give him a lot of playing time in the outfield. He hasn’t played there since 2014, and that was only 8 games. He never played more than 54 games in the outfield in Japan.
I can understand that teams will look for ways to get him PA’s if he’s really anything close to a 130 wRC+ hitter, but he already is expected to have a pitching workload that tops his highest totals for starts in a season (max of 24) and probably innings (max of 161).
I remember Nolan Ryan saying that after a start his legs would be even more sore than his arm. I just think that it’s hard to believe that Ohtani can pitch 150+ innings and still manage over 300 above average PAs in a season, especially when he is switching from a 6 to 5 man rotation.
The human body has limits, even when you are an insanely gifted athlete who can throw 100 and hit bombs.