'Japanese Babe Ruth' gets rocked by Mexican team
Spring training is a time for a pitcher to train, shake off the rust, work on his mechanics and get ready for the upcoming season.
It’s also a time when one of the most highly touted foreign prospects in Major League Baseball can get shelled like a bag of peanuts against vastly inferior competition to what he’ll face in April.
Shohei Ohtani, the Angels’ newest star acquisition, gave up six runs on five hits over three innings of work Friday against the Mexican League’s Tijuana Toros. He also plunked two batters and walked one. In total, he threw 64 pitches.
Ohtani, who spent five seasons with the Nippon Ham Fighters of Japan’s professional baseball league, could become the first American in almost 100 years to play regularly both as a pitcher and a position player.
The last American to accomplish that feat? A guy on the 1919 Boston Red Sox named George Herman Ruth.
Ohtani, for his part, is still adjusting to the way the game is played on this side of the Pacific Ocean.
“Adjustments need to be made with the ball and the mound and everything,” Ohtani said, speaking through an interpreter. “That may be some of the reasons I’m getting hit.”
“I felt like I made a lot of good pitches and quite a few bad ones,” he stated, according to The Orange County Register. “The good thing I got out of this outing was pitching with runners on base, out of the stretch.”
The 23-year-old has given up 10 runs in portions of six innings so far this spring, reminding everyone in the process why Angels management has emphasized that he is not yet a finished product.
As if the pitching problem wasn’t bad enough, his hitting hasn’t been much better. He has just one hit in 11 at-bats for a very major league pitcher-like .091 batting average.
Ohtani’s fastball isn’t turning any heads either. He’s hitting 92-95 miles per hour on the radar gun, relying on sliders and splitters to get batters out. On his best day, he’s more Greg Maddux than Randy Johnson, and on his worst days — like Friday — he’s throwing batting practice.
Catcher Rene Rivera, who caught Ohtani’s Friday shellacking, chalked it up to the different environment in Tempe, Arizona, compared to the bright lights of Anaheim.
Rivera summed things up simply, saying, “He got a little lost.”
“I’ll tell you something,” he added, “once the lights come on, it’s a different ballgame. It’s tough to pitch here. There are no fans. (Tijuana), don’t get me wrong, they’re a good team, but they’re not a big league team. The adrenaline is not there. Once the lights come on and they say ‘Play ball,’ you’ll see something different. More velocity, sharper pitches. It’s going to be Ohtani. You have to give it time.”
On Friday, the Angels used Ohtani in the “B” game (the other half of the squad played against the Chicago Cubs). As a result, he didn’t face the type of ballplayers he’ll be pitching to in the major leagues.
The adrenaline is lower, but so are the stakes.
Ohtani remains confident, however, as evidenced by his statement about his Opening Day readiness.
“At this point, I feel like I’m taking the right steps forward,” he said. “Over the last few years, I’ve gotten where I need to be. I think I’ll be ready.”
Angels fans better hope so. After all the work it took to get him, there’s a lot riding on him getting his stuff together in a hurry.
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