Shohei Ohtani Flashes Hype-Worthy Ace Potential After Nightmare Beginning
Shohei Ohtani finally got a proper introduction to a major league mound on Sunday, and he used it to look a lot more like the Japanese legend than the spring training cautionary tale.
Granted, the 23-year-old wannabe two-way star (he went 1-for-5 in his hitting debut on Thursday) didn’t compile an all-timer of a pitching line in the Los Angeles Angels’ 7-4 win over the Oakland Athletics. He lasted six innings and gave up three runs, all of which scored on a long home run by Matt Chapman.
But like with any good race car, it’s what’s under the hood that cheap nfl nike jersey counts.
Elsewhere on Ohtani’s debut line are six strikeouts and one walk. He earned those by throwing 63 strikes and by collecting (per ESPN.com) 18 whiffs out of 92 total pitches.
That’s a 68 percent rate of strikes and a 20 percent rate of swinging strikes. cheap nike nfl jersey Even Max Scherzer would blush at strike and whiff rates like those.
Yeah, yeah. Small sample size and everything. One promising start does not an ace make. And so on with the appropriate disclaimers.
But if nothing else, this much is apparent right now: The Ohtani who looked completely out of his depth during spring training wasn’t the real Ohtani.
Although he arguably looked worse at the plate in putting up a .347 OPS in 11 Cactus League games, Ohtani didn’t look good on the mound. He put up a 27.00 ERA in two Cactus League starts and also mostly got knocked around in three unofficial outings.cheap nike nfl jerseys wholesale
Included among the latter set was an exhibition against the Mexican League’s Tijuana Toros in which he got shelled for six runs. According to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports, part of the problem was that Ohtani’s fastball velocity was having difficulty escaping the 90-to-91 mph range.nfl nike jersey cheap
In retrospect, maybe that’s because he was saving his best bullets for The Show.
