It hasn’t been the most electric start to the season for baseball’s most exciting player.
A year after Shohei Ohtani proved the sport’s biggest stage is no match for his talent, the two-way star finds himself mired in a wee bit of a slump to begin his 2022 campaign.
Through five games and 21 at-bats, Ohtani has just three hits on five strikeouts with no walks. Considering he hits at the top of the Angels lineup, a .143/.143/.190 slash line isn’t what anyone wants to see at all. Especially not for an MVP favorite (+300 at Tipico). Ohtani knows this, too.
But not to worry, because the modern day Babe Ruth has a fix for his quiet bat.
Either way, Ohtani’s playful attitude here is exactly the right course. It’s the first week of the season and every one needs to take some deep breathes. He’ll be launching balls into orbit soon enough.
It’s not like he’s slumping on the mound, either. In his first start of the year, Ohtani went 4.2 innings pitched with nine strikeouts, one walk issued, one hit allowed and one earned run.
His bat will come around. Or surely the Angels have a defibrillator around the dugout Ohtani can use to wake it up.
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Every time you look over at him, Shohei Ohtani is making some jaw-dropping history.
The Angels mega-star has only just begun his fifth MLB season and is already the arguable face of baseball. A true titan of the sport.
Ohtani manages his stardom while hitting (mashing) for power and being a stellar fixture in the L.A. pitching rotation at the same time. We’ve never seen a unique dual-gifted player like Ohtani where MLB actively changes rules so he could get more at-bats.
Given the long history before his arrival, we might never see another. He’s that good and that much of a star.
A season after unanimously cruising to his first career AL MVP, Ohtani is undoubtedly ready to make mash more dingers and make more history. Fittingly, he wasted no time during the Angels’ game on Opening Day against the Astros (+1.5 favorites). It’s a mark only he could notch.
As the Angels’ ace and leadoff hitter, Ohtani became the first-ever (!) player in MLB history to throw his team’s first pitch and face his team’s first pitch of a season.
Whoa. What?
Shohei Ohtani is the first player in AL/NL history to both throw his team's first pitch of the season AND face his team's first pitch of the season as a hitter.
As we know it, professional baseball has been around for well over 100 years! You’re telling me that no one before Ohtani ever pitched and hit first on Opening Day among the thousands of players and iterations of teams over the years? I don’t believe it. Come on now.
I guess that’s what makes Ohtani so special. He can make history and break boundaries the near moment a season begins. What can’t he do?
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Shohei Ohtani can absolutely do anything on the baseball field. That’s why he’s the best player in the game, of course, and the reigning AL MVP.
But he’s also pretty good at things off the diamond, too. And one of those things seems to be impressions. Because he put on an absolutely fantastic impression of NL Cy Young Award winner Jacob deGrom as he warmed up during a bullpen session.
Cameras caught Ohtahni doing his deGrom’s signature glove to the face look before tossing an absolute burner. He also got in deGrom’s signature leg kick, too.
Ohtani is clearly someone who appreciates details and we love to see it.
The Los Angeles Angels slugger/pitcher — it never gets old writing that — appeared in 155 games in 2021. He pitched in 23 of those contests.
But … we need more Shohei Ohtani.
And thank to Major League Baseball, we’re getting more!
Despite the fact that we’re getting the “ghost runner” rule back in extra innings, there’s a new rule that means Ohtani won’t have to come out of games as a hitter when he’s pitching.
The old rule said that if he leaves the game as a pitcher, he would have to be replaced in the lineup.
MLB also included a new “Shohei Ohtani Rule’’ in their new protocols with the universal DH, according to the New York Post. If the starting pitcher is also hitting in the lineup, like Ohtani does, he can remain in the game as the DH even if he’s pulled out of the game as a starting pitcher. Angels manager Joe Maddon thought it was unfair if they were the only team in baseball playing by the old National League rules.
Let’s not lose sight of the fact that following the new CBA agreement they had to implement a new rule SOLELY BECAUSE OF THE LEGEND SHOHEI OHTANI 😂
There’s only one (fake) person fit to comment on Ohtani’s unprecedented season.
American League MVP Shohei Ohtani has landed on not one but TWO All-MLB Teams. He’s on the first team as a designated hitter and the second team as a starting pitcher.
That’s wild.
In the long history of baseball we’ve seen very, very few players who can be elite at both hitting AND pitching. Your average high school game features players who’ve already decided to focus on one or the other; the guys who can successfully do both are quickly forced into specializing once they get to college or the minors.
But there WAS one giant of the game renowned for doing both, and that was Babe Ruth. He starred as a pitcher early in his career with the Red Sox but is most remembered for clobbering home runs with the New York Yankees.
Luckily for you dear reader, I live in Baltimore, the birthplace of Babe Ruth and, for the purpose of this probably cliched but still fun concept, the place where his eternal soul is resting.
It’s the day before Thanksgiving, there are no rules, so let’s head down to the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum to rouse his eternal soul and get some thoughts on Ohtani.
BABE: Owwwwwww.
FTW: Wait, are you ok?
BABE: Just groggy. Hair of the dog?
FTW: You’ve been slumbering since 1948 and you’re *still* hungover?
BABE: You’ve heard the stories. Is that a brewery over there? Right near my old house?
FTW: It is. Suspended. Women-owned and operated. Really great beers.
BABE: Wait, wut.
FTW: Oh. Right. Yeah, women are allowed to do things now.
BABE: *stares blankly*
FTW: Anyway, wanted to get your thoughts on something as we walk over to this brewery since that is the direction you are headed and I can’t stop you because you’re a ghost, please wait up.
BABE: How’s my hair look? Think any of these young ladies will be interested in a date with the home run king?
(AP Photo/File)
FTW: Yeah, about that. Anyway. There’s this guy Shohei Ohtani who won the AL MVP this year and then was named to the All-MLB team as both a pitcher and a hitter. He batted .257 with 46 homers and 100 RBIs and went 9-2 with a 3.18 ERA and 156 strikeouts in 130 1/3 innings on the mound. Can you believe that?
BABE: (applying cologne liberally and swigging from a flask; the liquids splatter to the street below) Well that sounds probably like the greatest feat in baseball history.
FTW: Well you were good at both ….
BABE: Look, kid, I played in an era when they DIDN’T EVEN LET BLACK PEOPLE PLAY IN OUR LEAGUE. Let alone players from around the globe. And nobody worked out. Look at me. I look like you, and you’re a stupid writer. It was a different time, and I just got lucky to be a naturally gifted athlete in an era when there was less incentive to become a pro athlete and fewer opportunities for them to emerge from whatever circumstances they found themselves in at the time. The money was good for the greats but for everybody else it was not the most structured way to live. Leagues were scattershot, owners were nuts. And there were wars! People had to go off and fight wars constantly. I bet that has stopped, right?
FTW: *stares blankly*
BABE: Point is, I was never truly playing against the best of the best, and we weren’t training in any meaningful way. I used to pretend to go down to the hot springs in Arkansas to do “exercise” but that was really vacation, bud, come on now. You got a picture of this Ohtani fella?
FTW: Let me pull it up on my phone here ….
BABE: (hides)
FTW: Yeah, man, this device has more information on it — and more b.s. — than every library that existed when you were alive.
BABE: Library?
FTW: Here he is.
(AP Photo/Richard W. Rodriguez)
BABE: Right. This is a strapping athlete who has honed his craft to be able to do what he did. You know that once some science nerds took me up to Columbia University to do a “study” on me and concluded that my eyes spoke to my brain quicker than anybody else, and my brain spoke to my hands quicker and I was sauced then, my friend, so those readings were probably dulled. I was just born to be great (in comparison with my extremely limited sample size of peers at the time.)
FTW: Fair enough, I suppose. You’ve really gained some perspective over the years, I’m impressed.
BABE: (reaches the brewery, is breathless) Ok, I have this shiny quarter here, give me five lady beers, please.
The 2021 Major League Baseball regular season is over, which means we’re on to the postseason which should be a ton of fun.
But before we get to that, let’s take a look back at some of the nastiest pitches from the season.
I don’t know about you but it felt like to me that pitchers took things to whole new levels of nastiness the season. from 101 mph sinkers to pitches that looked like wiffle balls, this season seemed to be a really rough one to be a professional hitter.
Let’s look back at the filthiest pitches that we saw from the season.
It felt like a foregone conclusion a month or two ago that Shohei Ohtani would win American League MVP no matter what happened the rest of the season, or no matter how bad the Los Angeles Angels were.
But! Here comes Vladimir Guerrero Jr.!
The slugger for the Toronto Blue Jays might be on his way to finishing the season as a Triple Crown winner (!) if he keeps up a torrid September. Would that put him in front of Ohtani, especially if the Angels end up shutting down his pitching due to a sore arm?
Let’s break it down and see who really should win this thing:
En verdad no hay nada que Shohei Ohtani no pueda hacer. Cuando lanza, lanza sliders aniquiladores. Cuando batea, hace que los fans de sus oponentes abucheen a su equipo por dejarlo caminar. Ah y claro, logra home runs perfectos como si fueran …
En verdad no hay nada que Shohei Ohtani no pueda hacer.
Y ahora, estamos aquí para enfocarnos en lo que puede hacer en las bases. ¡¡¡¿¿¿Sabían que, además de sus 42 home runs, 90 RBI, .262 de porcentaje de bateo y 3.00 ERA con 127 strikeouts… Ohtani se ha robado 22 bases este año???!!!
¡Es impresionante! Y su más reciente robo de base, como ya habrán deducido por el título de la nota, fue este martes en la noche cuando se robó el home como parte de un robo doble. Y vean también su manera de deslizarse:
But we’re here today to focus on what he did on the basepaths. Did you realize that Ohtani, in addition to his 42 home runs, 90 RBI, .262 batting average and 3.00 ERA with 127 strikeouts … has stolen 22 bases this year????
How wild is that? And that last stolen base, as you figured out from the headline, came on Tuesday night when he swiped home as part of a double steal. Look at this slide, too:
