PHOENIX — In Shohei Ohtani’s first start of the season, he wowed the baseball world by throwing nine pitches at 100 mph, peaking at 101.1 mph.
He’s hasn’t cracked 100 since.
Instead, he’s been doing something even more important.
He’s pitching.
Ohtani, who makes his ninth start of the season on Friday night against the Arizona Diamondbacks, has undergone a transformation in the first two months of the season.
Dig a little deeper than his impressive 2.76 ERA or 12.8 strikeouts per nine innings, and you see that Ohtani made some dramatic improvements over the past four starts that have taken him to the next level as a big league pitcher.
“His feel for the baseball right now is really, really strong,” pitching coach Matt Wise said. “We just have to continue to get him out there so he gets those reps.”
In Ohtani’s first four games, he averaged 96.8 mph with his fastball. He also walked an unsightly 9.2 hitters per nine innings. He threw just 40.2 percent of his pitches in the strike zone. The major league average is 49.2 percent.
Since then, the fastball is down to 94.4 mph, but he’s cut the walks to 2.7 per nine innings, including the first walk-free game of his 20-start career last week. He’s thrown 48 percent of his pitches in the strike zone.
Ohtani conceded that he dialed back the velocity after developing a blister in his first start, but since then there’s been no plan to decrease velocity to improve command. He said the better command has come with better mechanics, and his adrenaline brings the velocity when he needs it.
“I feel like my velo goes up once guys get on,” Ohtani said through his interpreter. “It’s something natural. I’m not really controlling it.”
Kurt Suzuki, who has become Ohtani’s personal catcher, isn’t so sure, though.
“He’s a very smart guy,” Suzuki said. “I think he understands his body better than a lot of the guys I played with. He knows when he has to subtract and add. You see a couple times when he’ll pump a couple 98’s in there in a big situation when he needs it. But he knows if he throws strikes, he can still throw hard enough to get guys off his split, his breaking balls and all that kind of stuff.”
Suzuki said he believes Ohtani is also conscious of the energy he’s exerting when he pitches. No other pitcher, of course, needs to hit too.
“I think he’s pacing himself,” Suzuki said.
Maddon said he’s noticed a few times that Ohtani has seemed to intentionally dial back the velocity, but mostly he believes the improved command is a product of cleaner mechanics.
“Early in the year the fastball was shotgun, all over the place, and he was kind of jumping off the mound in his finish,” Maddon said. “He’s got a better finish to his delivery and you’re not seeing the shotgun approach.”
Certainly, a part of the reason Ohtani has improved is that he’s finally getting extended, uninterrupted mound time.
From the second half of 2018 through the 2020 season, Ohtani was constantly rehabbing something. Over that span, he pitched a total of four innings in major league games and just a few more in some intrasquad games in summer camp 2020.
“There has to be some patience,” Wise said. “He didn’t have a lot of innings under his belt last year.”
This spring he added another 10-1/3 innings. As encouraging as he was in that time, because he was healthy and the stuff was there, the command never really was. He still walked 10.
Maddon told anyone who would listen not to worry, that Ohtani looked better and would work out the kinks.
Not only has his delivery improved, but he’s also increasingly used a new pitch, the cutter. Ohtani threw his cutter 7.6 percent of the time in the first four games, and 15.2 percent in the next four.
“It’s just another toy,” Suzuki said. “He’s got so many weapons. Some days he’ll tell me ‘Let’s just go with this pitch, because it feels good.’ Some days he says ‘The split’s not good, let’s go with the cutter.’”
The cutter, and the improved control, have helped Ohtani become more efficient. He threw 3.94 pitches per plate appearance in the first four games, compared with 3.57 in the next four. That’s allowed him to get deeper into the games.
Ohtani didn’t record an out in the sixth inning in any of the first four games, but in the last four he’s finished six innings two times and finished seven once.
All of it is an example of how much he’s improved over just two months, and Suzuki figures he’s going to keep developing.
“With how athletic he is and how strong he is and how much knowledge he’s gaining, I think each start is going to help him,” Suzuki said. “He’s going to learn from it and get better and better. Who knows how good he can be? He’s a special talent.”
UP NEXT
Angels (RHP Shohei Ohtani, 2-1, 2.76 ERA) at Diamondbacks (RHP Merrill Kelly, 2-6, 5.12), Friday, 6:40 p.m., Bally Sports West, 830 AM
