Will Otani Change the Game?
TAMPA, Fla. — Even if Shohei Otani is not the next Babe Ruth, even if baseball has to settle for welcoming the next Madison Bumgarner some time in the not-too-distant future, some team will be quite happy.
You’re probably familiar with Otani. In case you’re unfamiliar with the Japanese star, however, please take a moment to familiarize yourself with the resume.
As a 21-year-old last season, he went 10-4 with a 1.86 ERA over 20 starts in the NPB. He struck out 174 and walked 45 in 140 innings. Oh, he also OPS’d 1.004 with 22 home runs over 323 at-bats in 104 games. He was named the league’s best pitcher and best DH.
The following exhibits from 2016 are visual evidence of this player’s existence.
Let’s start with the fastball that sits in the mid- to upper 90s and that has touched 102 mph…
And just as important as the velocity is his ability to locate the pitch…
He can miss bats with his bending breaker…
And, oh yeah, he’s also picked up a changeup…
He might be the best bat and arm since George Herman Ruth, though the Yankees decided to end Ruth’s pitching career.
The 6-foot-4 right-handed pitcher and left-handed hitter won the home-run derby and once launched a ball that never came down from the Tokyo Dome roof:
Otani could be posted after this season according to reports from this past winter, and according to, Yahoo!, there are potentially ways around the new, stricter limitations in signing Under-25 international players. Dave Cameron examined some other contractual challenges Otani will present.
Otani is, I believe, the best international prospect we’ve seen this generation (or ever?). He certainly owns the most dynamic and unusual skill set we’ve seen. Unique is often mis-used. One cannot be “kind of,” “sort of” or “somewhat” unique. Unique means one-of-a-kind. Otani is unique. While he’ll be courted as a pitching prospect, he’s the kind of extremely rare talent that can impact the game from the mound and the batter’s box, the idea being he could be a better version of Madison Bumgarner. The kind of player, in other words, a team actually thinks about playing in the field between starts. The Ringer’s Ben Lindbergh noted he led the NPB with 10.4 WAR last season: 5.8 wins as a pitcher, 4.6 as a hitter.
The team that signs Otani will have a bit of a quandary, albeit a desirable one: how do you maximize his many talents? Should he mostly pitch? Could he spent some of his time between starts in the lineup as a DH in the AL or as an outfielder in the NL? Does it make more sense for him to land with AL or NL club? There is no road map to follow. Just yesterday Eno examined the curiosity that is catcher-pitcher Christian Bethancourt.
Wrote Mr. Sarris:
If Bethancourt gets 20 plate appearances as anything other than a pitcher this season, and adds 20 innings pitched, he’ll join a list of just eight players who have ever managed the feat. You’ll recognize a couple of these names — the rest did their very best to stay in the game, bless them. Not a Bullet Joe Rogan in the bunch.
But Otani is different, of course, because he could be an ace pitcher and an above-average offensive performer. The Davenport Translation for his age-21 performance in the majors? A .306/.367/.512 slash line.
To better understand Otani I spoke with Anri Uechi of Kyodo News, who covers Masahiro Tanaka and the Yankees but also has followed the career of Otani. I asked Uechi for a comps on Otani as a pitcher and hitter. He came up with a blend of Yu Darvish — only with more velocity – and Christian Yelich. Hey, not bad.
“I have a dream that maybe he can change the game,” Uechi told FanGraphs. “He can bring a revolution to the major leagues. If he can do that and be out of Japan that would be something. Maybe amateur players that have a hope that they can do both [will be encouraged]. Maybe some teams will try Otani [as a two-way player] … The thing about baseball here [in America] is it’s all about money, a six-man rotation is more money. I don’t think it’ going to happen soon. But I believe he has a chance to change the game in some ways and make a difference.
“Maybe some team will try six-man rotation and put him in and allow him to play outfield or DH or whatever so that is kind of a dream.”
It raises an interesting question of whether Otani would provide more of a competitive advantage in the NL, where he projects to have more value than Bumgarner over opposing pitcher’s bats. Bumgarner has produced, roughly, 1.0 to 1.5 wins over most of his NL contemporaries via his bat in recent seasons. The average pitcher slashed .133/.165/.172 last season. Or would Otani benefit from pitching in the AL where he could be employed as a DH on days he is not pitching?
But employing a unique talent like Otani would come with challenges and would be in need of creative solutions.
“I don’t think he has addressed specific leagues or teams he wants to play for. … I think he wants to get at-bats more than just pitching for National League teams, but realistically I think it’s harder to play [every day and pitch] in the [majors],” Uechio said. “There are only four days rest, more games in a season, more traveling, the time differences he has to adjust to. Even [Masahiro] Tanaka struggled for his first couple of years adjusting to the schedule…He got used to it and had a better routine last year. As I fan, I want to see him in the American League to make a revolution, be that two-way player that can be successful in both ways in the AL. But realistically I think he will be a Bumgarner, a really good pitcher with good hitting skills, maybe pinch-hitting. But fielding in the outfield, too? That would be challenging.”
Tanaka and Otani worked out together during the offseason.
“They talked about command because Tanaka has really good command,” Uechi said. “Playing over here is totally different. He cannot play the same way as he has been.”
Still, could he make 100 starts as a DH or in the outfield? Could he log 400 plate appearances of above-average performance along with being a top-of-the rotation arm? Would clubs risk the extra strain in what figures to be valuable (and expensive) asset?
Uechi said Otani is motivated to play in the majors as soon as possible and considered making the jump out of high school.
“Everybody knew he wanted to come over here and play. That was his hope when he got drafted from high school,” Uechi said. “Coming over here directly from his high school was his hope, his choice, too. But the Nippon-Ham Fighters — his current team — gave him a presentation and told him that going directly to America would be harder. [Nippon-Ham said] he should play here for a few years and then we will send you over there. That’s their agreement.”
When he does arrive, with health, he figures to be great. And perhaps he can be great enough to force a break from convention, and become the rarest of assets in baseball, a two-way, impact star. And maybe that will allow for more two-way players to be developed, which could be a major roster advantage in an age of reduced innings from starters and bullpen specialization. Maybe instead of making a choice on draft day on whether a prospect like Josh Lowe or John Van Benschoten is a pitcher or a hitter, maybe there is a development path that can allow both skill sets to be explored and development.
Maybe Otani is so good he will force the game to consider the boxes and labels it adheres — and often quickly adheres — to prospects. Maybe other two-way players will follow. Uechi believes that’s the promise of Otani.
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.
Look gifs are all well and good but the real way to experience Otani if you’re unfamiliar with him is this youtube highlight reel of all 200 strikeout pitches from 2015: https://youtu.be/L88TThVSJ9Y
Yes, viewing the gifs I find I miss the excited Japanese-language commentary. I especially need to find a YT clip of that ball that never came down.
I lean toward having him as a DH in the AL, if the bat truly will play as above average. He will provide more value than an NL club would get, and avoid the risk of injury and wear and tear of playing OF regularly in the NL.
Pitchers get hurt.
If can really do .300/.360/.500 he’s a hitter.
You don’t risk a bat like that on a mound, especially considering the differences in pitching load vs Japan.
Scouts are, universally, much higher on him as a pitcher than a hitter. A year ago he hit .202 with a 36% K rate. Even in his breakout at the plate last year, he still had a 26% K rate. Given his size, the higher velocity of MLB pitchers will be a challenge. So, no, he very likely isn’t .300/.360/.500.
On the mound, he is probably already one of the 10-15 best SP on the planet. You start with that and work the bat in as possible.
Good point, although if the plan is to keep using him as a two-way player, recovery time might be shorter. I’m no doctor but I would think a guy could DH after Tommy John surgery way sooner than he could start throwing.
Two of the likely top picks in the draft are two way players. It’s probably true Greene only pitches at first, but what about Mckay? He looks like he could be a two way player. Will teams risk their development in being elite at one skill, to be good or very good at two?
My guess is that most MLB draft prospects are usually at least a few years away from being MLB-ready with either skill, let alone both. These players generally are not guaranteed to make the bigs with either, and so to maximize their chances they generally have to focus on one.
What makes Otani unique is not that he is a two-way player, it is that he is a two-way player who appears to have the skills to succeed in the big leagues with both skills, today.
I think we need to change the DH rule, it’s absurd that you can’t have a pitcher hit for himself without losing the DH slot for the entire game.
It’s bad enough when it’s just Bumgarner in the occasional AL park game whose more likely to be a DH for someone else than he is to be allowed to bat for himself in his own games. But if we add Otani we have the potential absurdity of a REGULAR DH who can’t DH every five days because he’s the pitcher, and you lose the DH spot for the entire game if a pitcher swings a bat.
Is it really that absurd? Otani would generally get at least 3 ABs, and with another roster spot free for a position player, you can easily play matchup with the other AB or two, and double-switch when needed. We’re not talking about an insurmountable obstacle, and if his bat plays then it’s more than worth it.
Otani might get to 3 PAs more often than not if he is able to be an ace-caliber pitcher, but he would still require two pinch-hitting appearances a significant portion of his starts, three in a start in which he doesn’t have it and gets bombed, and then there are the games that go to extras.
I don’t even think you could have him hit for himself to start–you’d need to know already that he’s a pitcher who will consistently give you 7 innings before you even get close to what would likely be a break-even. Then you have additional issues, like the managers worrying about a pitcher batting against a pitcher who almost never bats.
All told, without at least a rule change allowing me to let my pitcher bat but at any time substitute the pitcher batting for DH for the rest of the game, I wouldn’t often let my pitcher bat even if he was Otani. If my bench were full of meh bats who were mostly glove-first players, I might have Otani bat more often in favorable matchups, especially if he gets into the seventh like clockwork. But otherwise, by my math AL pitcher batting under current rules is unlikely to be a net positive even if he is a guy who can swing it better than 90% of the league.
Thank you for admitting that the AL version of the game is inferior to the NL version.
Nice try.
You were well aware of his point which is just that an optimal solution would be that an AL team would be able to allow their starter (and any subsequent pitcher appearing consecutively thereafter) to bat for themselves, but then substitute a DH (for the remainder of the game) at any time.
It’s sensible, and allows a manager with a better pitcher-hitter option than DH option to take advantage of it whilst not having that advantage obliterated by the frequent necessity of having to use multiple pinch-hitters for the pitcher’s spot in many of the starts even if the pitcher is an Cy Young contender.
There are pros and cons to the DH and its absence but if you want to pretend like watching your average pitcher go up there and have an amateurish plate appearance instead of seeing a professional hitter like Big Papi, Edgar Martinez, or Frank Thomas, I’m not going to make-believe with you.
I believe that any player could be the DH in a game. A team could DH their defense-only backup catcher and bat Otani. Then double switch their starting catcher with Otani and their first reliever with the the DH’d backup catcher. Of course that day, Otani would only get 3 plate appearances.
I will read any and all articles on Shohei Otani. This is my catnip.
I just really hope that he comes over soon and he’s able to try playing both ways. I’m assuming that would be part of the negotiations before signing, but it just doesn’t seem smart for an NL team to let him play the outfield between starts. That means he gets interleague DH starts and a pinch-hitting appearance per game, so he’d top out at about 150-200 PAs per season. I don’t know if that’d be enough for him to sign with an NL team over the opportunity to DH a few times a week.
Agree 100%. It would be awesome to see him pitch mostly full time (thrown a few extra rest days in) and DH 3 (or 4?) times a week. The few 2-way players we’ve had in MLB over the past 20 years or so have mostly been novelties, and ultimately were not good at one of the two (or both) to cut it. The closest LEGIT 2 way player was Ankiel, but even he only hit or only pitched during his 2 MLB stints.
Also, I’m glad he did his time in NPB cause if he came to the US out of HS he would have been made to do one or the other. Now he has some leverage to at least try to give it a shot.
Unless he significantly increases his workload, he won’t get that many more ABs in the AL.
Not only does the NPB use 6-man rotations, they have more off days, with one virtually every week. Otani this year rested two days before each start, and one day after. Under the NPB schedule, that leaves him DHing 3 of 6 games per week. But under an MLB 5-man rotation, the same rest schedule only leaves him DHing 1 or 2 out of 5 games. That’s 150-200 ABs.
This guy sounds wonderful. He can contribute immensely on NL clubs as well, without playing the field. He could be top bat off the bench and play DH in inter-league games.
Then again, there have been many foreign born players we get excited about who don’t perform up to our expectations. Let’s wait and watch.
I can’t help but think we are far too conservative and really baby our elite athletes these days. Athletes are in better shape than ever before. We know more about nutrition, strength training, and bio-mechanics now than we ever have. And I also believe most all athletes possess the necessary intellect to be able to study pitching and hitting simultaneously. It’s still just a sport, no matter how complicated we try to make it seem. I think perhaps the next big inefficiency clubs find is that they are not utilizing two players enough. As long as there is a limit to roster sizes and payrolls, there is lots of surplus value in two way players.
I mean, players still get hurt, a lot. I don’t know. It seems like we “baby” them and in response they just play harder and get hurt the same amount. I feel like we’re keeping them less fatigued, which is good, but not any healthier.
Here is a GIF I made of Shohei Otani’s slider:
https://gfycat.com/ImpishNauticalCrayfish
It’s really hard to say what’s going to happen to him long-term. If he does get posted early and going to back to Japan for another year is an option, I could see him using that leverage to sign with a team that promises to let him play his way.
I think I’m with everyone here who says that they wouldn’t want to Otani playing in the outfield. That arm is made of gold, so I sure don’t want to put him at any position that seriously stresses it. But put him at 1B, DH, or as a pinch-hitter? Yeah, you’ve got me interested. And since I’ve heard that he really wants to stay a two-way player, it wouldn’t be surprising if more than one team offered that in their negotiations with him.
His cost will be outrageous but just think of the media interest and potential fan base returns on top of the possible performance level. Extraordinary. I can’t think of a reason for any team not to at least kick the tires on him. Even if he doesn’t join my team I’ll be watching his performance like a hawk.
I was bummed to re-read the DH rule (5.11 for those of you scoring at home, and those reading by themselves) and see that it *does* specify that the DH has to be for the pitcher.
I was envisioning the Yankees letting Otani bat for himself on days he pitches and using the DH spot to cover Jacoby Ellsbury.
I played an entire 14-inning game in Left Field without getting a single plate appearance back in high school because of the DH-for-anyone rules. The definition of cruel and unusual punishment.
You shoulda learned to hit! 😀
I think I’d like to see him sign with an AL team as the half-time DH. Split it with a RHH and rotate in LHH fielders to give them a rest. Maybe you work out a schedule where he pitches on Day 1, is unavailable Day 2, DHs Days 3 and 4, is available to PH Day 5, then pitches Day 6. ~300 PAs. I know absolutely nothing about what pitchers do on days between starts, though.
Can you use him as a de facto PH on days he’s pitching by switching him to the position of whomever he’s PHing for and replacing that guy with a new pitcher? I’m guessing no.
That’s a much heavier workload than he carried in Japan. He pitched once a week, on a cycle of SP, rest, DH, DH, DH, rest, rest, SP.
The real questions is how Fantasy baseball would deal with him. Would you need to draft him as a hitter and a pitcher?
I think the way to do it is to just draft him once but have him occupy two roster spots – his pitching and his hitting (you don’t currently get credit for Bumgarner’s HRs).
Back in the old bad times of Sandbox fantasy games, every time a hitter hit a HR there would be 250 threads on their message boards of people whining that they should get credit for those HR. Of course they conveniently forget that it would some with the .122 average with no HR he’d get in his other ABs, lol.
You seem to be saying 2 contradictory things. Or at least your comment on Bumgarner is in opposition to your suggestion that he occupy 2 spots.
I get that he will be expensive and that’s why there may be some hesitancy to put him in the rotation and as DH.
However, how much is saved by that roster spot? Now you can carry an extra reliever, or an extra platoon bat.
Why not just make Ohtani a full time DH who is also your multi inning reliever? Surely that would be less strenuous.
Imagine a Yelich/Andrew Miller baby is what I’m saying.
Yes, this is my thought as well. You don’t expose him to the high injury risk as a SP, so you can put him in your lineup everyday and still get something out of him as a pitcher. And with the way teams are starting to place more value on the Andrew Miller-type, multi-inning “relief ace” you still get good value out of the arm.
Considering “the Andrew Miller-type, multi-inning ‘relief ace'” hadn’t existed for decades prior to last year’s post-season, and this season is two days old, I’m a little skeptical that this is a real trend.
Not true, they are rare, but Buck Showalter and Torre (stealing the idea) had made Mariano Rivera into the relief ace in front of John Wetteland.
The issue is that many pitchers in general aren’t durable, and their utility to start or close has been main rostering goals for your most talented pitchers.
You’re talking about one single year, in 1996. In what way is that indicative of some kind of trend?
Meanwhile, Andrew Miller has now pitched one inning in each of two appearances, so it appears Cleveland may not use Andrew Miller as Andrew Miller-type.
Not saying it *shouldn’t* happen. Saying that there’s no evidence yet that it is happening.
This was my first thought as well. A NL team could use him in the OF and jog him in in high-leverage spots. Would he need to take a trip to the bullpen to warm up first?
Scouts are, universally, MUCH higher on him as a pitcher than a hitter. A year ago he hit .202 with a 36% K rate. Even in his breakout at the plate last year, he still had a 26% K rate.
On the mound, he is probably already one of the 10-15 best SP on the planet. You start with that and work the bat in as possible.
Could he play 1B instead to save on the physical wear?
“Unique is often mis-used. One cannot be ‘kind of,’ ‘sort of’ or ‘somewhat’ unique. Unique means one-of-a-kind. Otani is unique.”
Really hoping you were consciously or subconsciously inspired by The West Wing here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bQGEBEYPf9g
I like the idea of putting him at 1st for an NL team but I think he may not hit as well as an upper end 1B – so you might be giving up something to put him there. Also, when he pitches you could lead him off to get more AB’s and then possibly switch him to 1B if you remove him from pitching and if your teams 1Bman isn’t as good.
The Reds don’t have the 65+ graded prospects to effectively complete an eventual turnaround especially against the Cubs. What do you think the chances are of the Reds coming out on top for him?
I would guess less than 1 in 30. Cincy does not have a substantial Japanese (much less Japanese-American) population, the inclination to hand out $200M, nor really a place in the field you can offer him to play. Watch teams along the west coast and in the northeast with a budget (for example, Dodgers, Angels, Giants, Mariners, Red Sox, Yankees, Nationals). I’d love to see some team like the Brewers/Rays/Pirates/Royals make some lunatic offer that eats up 20% of their payroll to build a brand in Japan but I just don’t see it.
While I agree the chances of the Reds getting him are pretty small (and I’m a fan), they do occasionally surprise with a big splashy signing like Chapman.
Is there such a thing as negative zero?
I really want to see him as a full time outfielder who can serve as a high leverage reliever getting 110 starts in the outfield and 100 innings of Andrew Miller style relief. (let him sit the day following pitching, but only use him when he can throw 3+ innings). Even better would be to see him matched up with a lefty who can play the field…alternate arms when a tough lefty comes up…
How are you going to get him warmed up? Except for an injury, a relief pitcher only gets eight warmup pitches.
I’m very curious to see how the Dodgers will utilize him.
That’s an odd way to spell Yankees
Otani exemplifies a market inefficiency. Some team is going to promise the opportunity to hit and pitch and get a leg up on signing him. An NL team could slot him at #3 in the lineup every start yielding around 150 PA’s. pinch hit every other game for another 130 or so. If the stick translates, any team will find opportunities for him. I like th Padres willingness to experiment with Bethancourt. A new type of hyper utility player (who could pitch/catch and play multilple other positions) could simultaneously lengthen the bench and bullpen. I’d teach my kid to switch hit, play every position, spot a fastball, and throw a change with the exact same arm action. Imagine Ben Zobrist pitching… I wish the Dodgers would have Alex Verdugo throw bullpens. Mid nineties lefty fastball, and play every outfield spot.
I say forget all the timidity, and more or less just allow Otani to do what he’s done in Japan.
He’s stayed healthy and spectacularly successful, so leave well enough alone.
The rest of your starting rotation might be less than thrilled about being told the 5-man schedules they’ve been on for years will have to be disrupted to let Otani stay on his SP-once-a-week routine.
You make a sound point. And that’s why I said “more or less do what he’s done in Japan” as opposed to “exactly what he’s done in Japan.”
I should’ve been much more explicit, in that the timidity to which I was referring was the use of Otani in the field, or at the very least as an everyday DH. I say if he ain’t broke, don’t fix him.
It’s fairly obvious, that in the best interest of the game MLB should ” encourage” him to sign with the Cubs.
I’m growing a little suspicious of the Japanese hype bullet-train.
Ichiro is a goddamn stud.
Matsui had a very good career.
If Darvish can stop walking people, he’ll be an ace.
Tanaka’s on his way to a fine career; Maeda might be too.
Beyond that, there have been far more quad-A players than regulars coming over, even if they all tore up NPB.
If anything, the pitcher bust rate seems a lot lower than top prospects coming up through the minors. Position players, eh, yeah.
Your “bullet-train” is 15 years long.
Darvish has a career 3.30 ERA in the majors. He IS an ace.
As for the rest, it depends on what kind of “hype” you mean. Any player coming from Japan is going to be interesting and get a story in the paper, but not all of them are realistically expected to be more than AAAA players to begin with. It’s also true that most don’t get here until they’re past 30 and declining.
Hideo Nomo was the rookie of the year in 1995, pitched 11 years, led baseball in strikeouts twice and threw the only no-hitters in Coors Field and Camden Yards history.
Dave Cameron posted an article on Otani here last summer:
http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/how-good-is-shohei-otani/
As noted in the current article, he appears to be a better pitcher than hitter. An interesting sidelight of Dave’s article is that there is a hitter in Japan–a second baseman who can steal–who not only is better at the plate than Otani, but dominates Japanese hitters even more than Trout dominates American ones.
Tetsuto Yamada could be a rich man’s Jung Ho Kang, with more speed and less DUIs. I’m actually not too confident about the glove because the track record for Japanese infielders is not good, but the bat should play at any position.
The NPB has lacked legitimate position players stars for a while now. This might be the best group of young star hitters since the days of Ichiro and Hideki Matsui back in the 1990s.
Speaking of Ruth…
Does his swing look like Bryce Harper’s to you all? Who, according to one of his coaches, has a very similar swing to Ruth?
If he does play the field, 1B might be easier on his body/arm than OF.
The last player who was seriously considered a possible 2 way player was Olerud. Of course he was nowhere near the arm Otani is.
I find the injury and fatigue arguments unconvincing. People can do unimagined feats with the talent and desire.
How would love to know how Billy Beane would use Bumgarner, and how Bumgarner would see himself in the AL. Or see Otani in SF sharing the DH with Bum.
What is probably going to happen, as it is happening in all sports, is that organizing rest/recovery periods and rostering multi-faceted talent will be heavily utilized and experimented with in baseball in the coming years.
Although baseball was ahead in analytics of individual play, other sports caught on and organized their teams to bring out other talents from one-dimensional players (Ie: defensive specialist Bruce Bowen learning to shoot corner 3s to gain efficiency on offensive end).
Baseball, considering the amount of money lost to injuries vs. development will possibly start seeing more attitudes and adjustments towards rotations. It may not be 5-man, but possibly 6-man every two weeks and long-relief in a day game where team indirectly takes a loss by not playing all of their players (NBA already does this and they play half the games of MLB).
I could see a team coming on and using him as a starter and employing more of a 6-man design, and possibly rostering Betances/Joe Kelly types that can mold the 6th spot interchangeably. This would allow for better pitching rest periods and more efficiency in games. I could see this happening offensively too, and we already see teams like the Sox and Cubs build deep benches and keep most players from seeing more than 148 games per season.
Ohtani might be coming at the right time where teams are rostering much different than in the past. Teams are gearing more for their young players to take over long relief vs. starting. And pitch counts + fatigue factors analysis is getting close to forcing changes on pitcher workloads even more. Ohtani can be that piece that can represent the change. Development, as important as it may be, I don’t feel is as important once the player is built to keep a consistent game.
Between throwing sessions and scouting probably takes up half a day, wheereas batting practice and defense might be 3-4 hours. We have seen players nurse injuries and continue to produce, so I think the importance of development once in the majors would be more anecdotal than procedural. So hopefully Ohtani can break this role, or enough that he is two-way until he gets to 28-30 year old age.
A simple rule change of changing DH to DH/P and having both leagues use this rule solves everything. Simply let the manager decide if the pitcher hits or not, and allow any team to let a hitter PH for the P and then become the DH moving forward in the rest of the game. There is nothing wrong with this, and it solves a lot of stupid PHing situations. If Bumgarner wants to hit in the DH/P spot, let him – and if your pitcher has a .200 OPS, let a DH get in there.
His power is for real but could his strikeouts be an issue. 25% is not super high but japan is not a super high strikeout league. That could easily become 30+ in the majors. Of course he is young and could improve with more training but that could affect his pitching.
I’m not saying he can’t succeed hitting but doing it successfully as a side product to pitching in the majors is not easy. Even bumgarner is not a “good hitter”, he is a guy with power who strikes out a lot and occasionally hits one out. That is awesome for a pitcher and not easy to do but doing it every day when pitchers start to use gameplans against you is a different thing.
There are tons of sluggers in the minors with plus power who flame out due to contact issues. Otani could be one of them too, especially if he doesn’t want to concentrate on hitting.
Irresponsible and ignorant suggestion: let him keep his Japanese schedule. You don’t make the entire rotation adopt it. Instead, he fits between whichever pitchers are up when it’s his time. So maybe he pitches after the #1 opening week (so he’s the #2), but then his next time up he pitches after a different guy because he waited longer between spots. So he won’t be a #2 who always goes after the #1 in the rotation, but rather is a pitch once a week or every sixth day and goes in whichever spot is up that day, pushing that guy back a day. He has his own rotation independent of THE rotation, and just fits into it on the day he pitches. I don’t think it would be any more disruptive to the rest of the rotation than having an off day in the regular season schedule. And when there is an actual off day in the schedule, that would be a rest day for Otani and he could pitch like he was in the regular rotation. This way he could keep his normal hitting schedule too and get 350-400 at bats while pitching 170ish innings. That’s probably the best of both worlds. And the benefit of possibly 30 extra innings by going every fifth day might be mitigated by a performance hit caused by changing his normal schedule and giving him less rest. He might have the same WAR in 170 innings as 200 because of a better rate offsetting higher playing time.
Someone tell me why I’m dumb now, please haha.