Shohei Ohtani Has Already Verified Something
After a shaky spring, Shohei Ohtani was basically as advertised in his first start on the mound — which is remarkable, since he was essentially advertised as the best pitching prospect in nearly a decade.
In his debut, Ohtani maxed out at 99 mph on the fastball and averaged 97.8 mph on the same pitch while also showcasing a darting, 90 mph splitter and breaking ball. If Ohtani can approximate anything like the 19.6% swinging-strike rate of his debut and continue to exhibit solid command, he will be an ace in short order.
Ohtani’s fastball averaged 96.6 mph and 96.1 mph, respectively, his last two years in Japan. He posted 15.8% and 15.0% swinging-strike rates in his last two seasons in the NPB (his 2017 season was injury shortened). Our old friend Eno Sarris found that plate-discipline and batted-ball trends in the NPB and MLB are remarkably similar. While it’s often folly to draw too much upon small sample sizes in April, it would appear as though Ohtani has verified that his power stuff is real.
Ohtani did more verifying Tuesday.
Part of Ohtani’s legend, of course, is that he can also hit — or, at least, he could hit in the NPB. That’s what makes him such a compelling player, and that two-way ability is what made Tuesday night so much fun for those interested in dreaming on Ohtani.
As if there was any reason doubt that Ohtani’s power is real — which is a strange thing to doubt for a player who hit the roof of the Tokyo Dome — he put those reasons to bed on Tuesday night when he launched his first major-league home run off a Josh Tomlin curveball.
Enjoy:
https://gfycat.com/BossyImpressionableAzurevase
Perhaps Ohtani just used spring training to lower the astronomical expectations that accompanied him from Japan. If so, he raised them again on Tuesday. Ohtani’s blast energized Angel Stadium to such a degree that reporters said the reaction of the jubilant crowd shook the press box.
Ohtani later singled off a Tomlin cutter:
https://gfycat.com/EverlastingAccurateGuineapig
And Ohtani also lined a single to center off a 95 mph fastball from Zach McAllister:
https://gfycat.com/TenderLeanGyrfalcon
Hey, let’s get carried away. Through six games of the season, Ohtani has a 257 wRC+!
Again, it’s tough to make too much of any small-sample performance, but one thing we can take away from Ohtani’s night is that the power — or, at least, the raw power — is legit and will sometimes transition into games.
Shohei Ohtani tonight:
112.8 MPH single
100.6 MPH single
104.5 MPH HR??? #Crushing
— Daren Willman (@darenw) April 4, 2018
Ohtani’s single, recorded at 112 mph, represented the hardest-hit ball by an Angel since last August.
Shohei Ohtani's 112.8 mph single tonight is the #Angels' hardest-hit ball of the season so far. It it their hardest base hit since a 113.6 mph Mike Trout single last August 30.
— David Adler (@_dadler) April 4, 2018
Way back in December, MLB dot com stalwart and FanGraphs alum Mike Petriello gained access to NPB Trackman data and found that Ohtani had topped out at 101.6 mph on the mound last season and recorded a top exit velocity of 111.1 mph off his bat.
So what Ohtani has proven in this small sample to begin the regular season is that his underlying skills, his throwing velocity, and exit velocity, are legit. By those power measures, he’s as advertised.
The real glaring question has always been tied to his hit tool. Can he hit major-league pitching? How often will his raw power manifest itself as game power? There’s significant doubt about how just an effective hitter he can be. There was swing-and-miss in Japan which figured to be exacerbated in the majors.
In touring Arizona this spring, I found the Angels, albeit biased, to be bullish on Ohtani The Hitter.
We’ll see. What we’ve learned is the power is very real. Let’s remember that Ohtani is just 23. He was one of the best hitters in one of the world’s top non-MLB professional league just two years ago. Consider, for example, Clay Davenport’s translation of Ohtani’s 2016 NPB campaign, the batter’s age-21 season: 324 at-bats, 14 home runs, 34 walks, 89 strikeouts, a .306/.367/.512 slash line, a 133 wRC+.
Said Mariners GM Jerry Dipoto of Ohtani on his his podcast this offseason.
“I’ve seen players hit a ball 500 feet and players throw a ball 100 mph. I’ve just never seen one player do both of those.”
The promise was that Ohtani could consistently throw near 100 mph and crush home runs Stateside. In his first week in the majors, he’s proven he can do just that. Not a bad first impression.
If he can do each consistently, there would be nothing more compelling in the game.
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.
Radical idea: Don’t worry too much about Spring Training performances.
I mean it was Josh Tomlin, career 1.58 HR/9
Career 0.00 HR/9 against pitchers. (Across only 15 plate appearances, but if you’re going to be a highlight truther I’m allowed to use small sample sizes.)
Today, it was Corey Kluber. What’s his career home run rate again?
On his fastball? Probably terrible
Now you’re just being a troll, Kluber’s career average HR/9 is 0.85, and Kluber just won the Cy Young last year.
The problem I have with your comment is that you’re on a site that offers every analytic you need to write something other than, “Probably terrible.”
Is there a HR stat linked to his fastball?
I am not as technically inclined as many on this site, but here is what I found.
According to BrooksBaseball, his SLG Against on fastballs last season was excellent, the three years prior were what I assume to be average (I’m having a hard time finding a split for fastball only MLB league-average SLG Against), and the three prior were very low, but I’m too tired to even look at the sample size.
http://www.brooksbaseball.net/outcome.php?player=446372&b_hand=-1&gFilt=&pFilt=FA&time=year&minmax=ci&var=slg&s_type=2&startDate=03/30/2007&endDate=04/03/2018
Regardless, he hit a game-tying two run shot off one of the best pitchers of this era, and it doesn’t matter that he “sat fastball.” Every hitter sits fastball. He managed to actually hit it despite Kluber’s elite sequencing, deception, and breaking pitches earlier in the at-bat that could have struck him out.
you are just set on hating ohtani, aren’t you? whats next, you want to see his birth certificate?
I realize that these are just anonymous comments on a website, but it seems to me that you are probably terrible.
Yeah. He’s only hit 2 HRs in his career. Pujols is like three hundred times as good!
The Angels need to DH him at least 3/5 days, and it wouldn’t be a bad idea to forego a DH on days he starts. Even if he is ‘only’ able to muster an OPS of .800, he’s still a better option than what they have…and there’s a decent chance he beats that
If he hits on days he pitches, is he completely out of the game once he is removed from pitching? Or can he be pulled from the mound but stay in the DH slot on offense still? I’d assume he could stay in the game as a hitter since DH’s don’t otherwise have to change whenever there is a pitching change in the AL.
If he hits on days he pitches, removing him from the mound removes him from the game. Hitting when he pitches would forego the use of the DH for his team for that game.
Any substitution involving the DH forfeits the DH. Doesn’t matter if the DH is also pitching.
great question
If he gets beaned when he’s pitching and DHing, how many opponents should his replacement hit in retaliation, and which ones?
It would be nice to get him in the lineup more often, but he never hit that much, even in Japan. It would disrupt his rhythm and the impression we have here in Anaheim is that he isn’t pushing for that much action, either. In addition, the net effect of losing the DH is an obvious negative given he would have maybe 2 AB max on pitching days.
He did have 382 plate appearances one year, which would seem to be something of an upper bound on what he might get (would seemingly have to involve some period of time where he was just hitting). The thing is, I know that WAR is not exactly that useful for this because what matters is who the Angels can use instead, but it seems unlikely that he’s going to move the needle nearly as much hitting as he could pitching. There were only two actual, full time DHs last year that managed over 1.0 WAR (Beltre and Dickerson don’t count to me). It would seem foolish to do anything on the hitting side that would have any significant chance of hurting him on the pitching side.
And on that, pitching in the big leagues is supposed to be a full time job. I don’t think you can reasonably expect Ohtani to also be a full time DH without breaking down at some point in the long season.
Why would Beltre have count as a full-time DH to anybody? He was at 3rd 70% of the time in ’17.
I’m sure it’s because he shows up when you select “DH” on the leaderboards here and lower the plate appearance limit.
I would think the fact that you’d have to lower the PA limit to around 100 for him to show up on the 2017 DH leaderboard pretty obviously eliminates him from “full time” status. Unless I’ve spent my life misunderstanding the term “full time.”
This is nit-picky as all Hell, I’m sorry. Just stuck out to me and my pedantic instincts took over.
The limiting factor isn’t IP or AB, it’s time to rest. In that season, he pitched once a week (without hitting), DHed 3x a week, and completely rested 3x a week. And then he got hurt after that season.
DHing him in 3/5 of games would be a sharp increase in workload over anything he’s ever done.
If he pitches once a week, which seems to be the current plan, and rests the day before and the day after, he could get well over 300 PA, and even 400, depending on how often the day after pitching coincided with his team’s day off. I find it interesting that right now he’s slated to pitch on Sundays, because frequently Monday is a team’s day off (usually either then or Thursday). The question is whether two rest days a week is enough for him.
I do agree completely that most of his value is as a pitcher, and if there’s any conflict in that regard, and he’s doing well at both, pitching should take priority. He actually would most likely be more valuable in the NL, just hitting on days when he pitched (let alone adding PH PA), because of the vastly greater number of positional runs for pitcher:
https://www.fangraphs.com/community/can-ohtani-optimize-his-hitting-value-in-the-al/
https://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/is-ohtani-really-more-valuable-in-the-al/
If he’s batting clean up, he’d get 3 or 4 PAs.
In the ideal scenario, he pitches on Sunday, the team is off on Monday, he DHs Tu-Fri, rests on Sat, and the cycle repeats. Sometimes, of course, the Angels will play on the day after he pitches, and he won’t hit then. So it seems he can DH 3-4 days a week. In theory, this would give him > 300 PA for the season, even > 400 is a possibility. But as the season wears on, he may want more rest.
It’s so much more fun to get excited about something and hope that awesome things happen than it is to hope they fail. More people should try it 🙂 . Welcome to the ShoShow, whatever happens it looks like it’ll be a joy to watch and I really want him to do it…
All of those pitches appear to be down and in or close to it, yeah? Interested to see if that will be a trend that holds up with is hitting
It’s almost unbelievable how well he clears his hips and generates that power. That shoulder and hip separation is almost certainly a prime reason why he can throw 100mph too. Very interested to see pitchers try to adjust/throw him everything 2 inches outside.
Or not facing Josh Tomlin who unfortunately has the tough task of pitching as…Josh Tomlin
It was one game. He won’t hit his body weight come year end.
One pile of downvotes wasn’t enough, eh?
He’s listed as 203 pounds in several places online. Last year, only 11 hitters hit below .203 and got 200 plate appearances or more.
So he’s either going to hit above his weight or he’s not going to keep getting chances. Either way, I don’t think he will hurt the Angels with his bat.
I’d take the over if we are comparing Ohtani’s 2018 bat to 2017 Pujhols.
You left out the possibility that he goes full Livan Hernandez on American food.
Shirtless Bartolo, you missed your cue…
How does Ohtani homering off Kluber affect your hypothesis?
Southie – What’s your theory on Kubler? Did he just get lucky?
somebody lost a bet. who hurt you, southie?
Interesting you’d say that about his mechanics. I’ve watched almost none of Ohtani’s MLB time so far, but based just on the home-run clip I was pretty surprised how loopy and long his swing looks — makes him look like a hitter you can bust inside with a fastball, who’ll do that only with mistake off-speed stuff.
That’s what scouts have been saying for a while (including Eric, IIRC). I don’t have a strong opinion either way since I haven’t seen him hit, but it sure sounds like it’s correctable with reps. I had always been under the assumption that he wouldn’t get enough reps to correct it, but I suppose it’s possible he’s so weirdly coordinated it doesn’t matter.
The competent-to-good hitters who’ve come to MLB from Japan all seem to open their hips very quickly and violently long before their arms come through, even though their swings overall are quite different: Ohtani, Matsui, Ichiro, even Nori Aoki. I can’t think of a single North or South American player who bats that way, and the two Korean hitters who come to mind aren’t nearly so pronounced about it. So it seems like it has to be something particular about how hitting is coached in Japan.
Anyone know of anything written about why that technique is prominent there but nowhere else? I’m sure there must have been but I’m not finding it online. It reminds me a little of how rowing technique for crew works: legs first, then core, then arms. When you’re comfortable it becomes a fluid motion, but it’s very sequential and you kind of have to learn it in pieces to get it right.
You don’t want your hips and hands completely out of sync like that – see Javy Baez when he embarrasses himself. That is not conducive to making consistent contact. I think he will get himself out very frequently when pitchers come to respect him. Guys with goofy swings get challenged a lot early until they prove that they are dangerous.
What a time to be alive!
So Josh Tomlin has been a pretty good pitcher, but it’s worth nothing that he is not exactly a fireballer. The guy has one of the lowest-velocity fastball in the majors. If I recall correctly (I may not), Japan doesn’t have a lot of homegrown power pitchers (especially since the ones they do have go to the states), so it’s quite possible Ohtani at this stage is more “used” to guys like Tomlin.
It is also possible that he is just awesome and that he’ll continue crushing pitching going forward. But I’m guessing he’s still adjusting.
Part of me thinks he was just intentionally sucking in Spring Training.
he was probably tired of all the hype and wanted more doubters to prove wrong. i doubted him but im back on the sho-train
I imagine he was more focused on mechanics, like the little changes he’d made to his swing and shortening his step. Now he’s dialed in on the pitches and its showing. Will be fun to see how the evolution of adjustments unfold with him, sure hope he keeps getting reps.
He just homered to dead center on a Corey Kluber fastball.
Is it too early for that $100M+ extension?
Yes. There would be screams of a secret deal between the Angels and Ohtani if they extend him too early. They were limited to offering him international signing money and a standard contract.
If he keeps up anything like this for a couple of months, THEN you can offer him truckloads of money. (Note: As I write this his xFIP is 3.24 and his wRC+ is 280. Small sample sizes apply.)
I believe his comment was half in jest, half serious
Yes, but it’s also an interesting question precisely because of the “tampering” issue Doug Lampert references. There was speculation about this very question before he picked the Angels — and it’s no longer theoretical.
I doubt if Ohtani continues to do well throughout the season that the commissioner will bat an eye at a record breaking deal
because Ohtani is unconventional
Sure, at present on a very small sample he’s actually looking better than peak Ruth. If he does this well for even till the Allstar break, you can extend him for lots of money and the commissioner won’t object.
But if his wRC+ falls back to something more like a “mere” 130 or so, then the tampering issue will be raised if you extend him even if it’s after his first full year.
To be fair a mere wRC+ of 130 would have made him the 30th best offensive player last year with 500+ plat appearances
Of course the full package inst just the bat, its the pitching, and if he pulls off a darvish-like rookie season plus a decent wRC+ he could easily justify a decent extension 1 year in.
Obviously if he were to extend now to a huge payday that would raise alot of questions, but a year later with good performance should not raise alot of eyebrows because he’s “proved/proving” he’s something special
The full package includes his age, too.
Apparently he was also clocked sprinting almost 30 mph which is elite too. He probably could be a good outfielder too.
Might already be the best athlete in the majors with his power, speed and arm. Doesn’t mean that will translate to performance of course.
Feet/s not mph of course. Mph would be usain bolt.
Sho has!