Shohei Ohtani reaches the end of a tedious recovery on Sunday, 21 months from the scalpel to the major league mound, a difficult experience that may have stripped 200 or more innings of the remarkable career he intends to build here.
On the positive side, he set an all-time record for success and home runs for a pitcher rehabilitating from Tommy John surgery.
He returned to Oakland, where he made his first hit as major league and Angel of Los Angeles, and three days later he released his first pitch, continuing the journey that began in his native Japan, where no one forced him to choose a side. .
Ohtani turned 26 three weeks ago. He enters his third season here by racking up 51 innings, 715 at-bats (including five Friday nights), a Rookie of the Year award, and a truer sense of what the highest level of the game asks of him. More, apparently, what he asks about himself.
While he hasn’t endured every inch of a US Major League Regulatory season just the way he aspires to play them, and he won’t do it again in 2020, the next two to three months are the challenge he faces. in front. The plan is to pitch it initially once a week, on Sundays, for now, and use it as a designated hitter Tuesday through Friday. The Angels chose Sundays because the schedule gives them three game-free Mondays, anyway days Ohtani would probably rest from the start of the previous day.
For all of Ohtani’s bids, 11 strikeouts over nine innings as a pitcher (about what Max Scherzer and Chris Sale have done throughout their career) and a home run every 18 at-bats (Bryce Harper, Josh Donaldson), is still a pitcher making his first start since elbow surgery, and still a hitter who hasn’t had 400 at-bats in one season, and is about to return to a job that requires him to be more than competent at both.
(Albert Corona / Yahoo Sports)
His first run in this, over two months and a week earlier in the 2018 season, just before a suboptimal MRI of his elbow, resulted in:
Nine starts, a 4-1 record, 3.10 ERA and 61 strikeouts in 49 ⅓ innings.
A .289 batting average and .907 OPS in 129 plate appearances in 34 games.
That 23-year-old boy, long and thin, shy, humble, and as classy as any athlete in the game, was unique in almost anyone’s life. Babe Ruth had not released a pitch in 85 years. The two-way players between Ruth and Ohtani were mostly amateurs by comparison.
Two years later, Ohtani sat in front of a camera on Saturday morning, with his translator standing over him to his right. Ohtani has widened his chest and shoulders. Otherwise, he is still youthfully young in his appearance. Those who know him say he is relentlessly driven, reflected in a professional career that began in 2013, shortly after his graduation from high school, and in his decision to leave Japan before millions of true free agents, and in the belief that you can do this, and then in whatever it is, the victories and the failures, you are ahead.
If there is going to be a pitcher with such qualities and results, if there is going to be a hitter who produces with the best in the game, and if that has only one player, that is what Ohtani seems to expect from himself. Once, for two months and a week, he made it possible. There are now 60 games, which equates to one season, and after a 1-for-5 batting third, behind Mike Trout, on Friday night, he will start on the mound Sunday against the Oakland Athletics.
On the eve of that start, he was asked about returning to the mound and returning to the player he imagines.
“Definitely not neutral,” he said. “It is a small mix of everything. Some are concerned. A little bit of excitement. Especially there will be no fans, so that will also be strange.
“It is a little different than before my debut. At the time, I just wanted to give everything I had and see how my things were doing against the big leagues. Now I’m more focused on seeing how much I went back to where I was before, before surgery. “
Shohei Ohtani will return to the mound under the command of new manager Joe Maddon, who says he has no limitations on his pitch count. (Photo by Masterpress / Getty Images)
Joe Maddon just met Ohtani. They had some time in spring. They had a few weeks in July. There, somewhere, Maddon determined that Ohtani had a good soul. It is a reasonable virtue.
“Smile easily,” Maddon explained. “He is very respectful. I think he listens wonderfully. I don’t know yet, but I think as you make it a friend it will always be there for you. He just had this really nice shape of him. I think the word is respect. The way you respect others. We have not had in-depth conversations. He does not speak English well enough, nor do I speak Japanese. [But]It is a good soul. He is a great talent. I don’t think he will lose his humility or his gratitude. I think he will always carry those characteristics with him. “
He has also said that good is not enough for Ohtani. That Ohtani will only settle for the great. Ohtani nodded and tried to explain what “great” would look like at the end of 60 games, or 60 and whatever October brings.
“Obviously,” he said, “the numbers are important. But, as long as I finish my work and do what I need to do, I’m sure the numbers and statistics will follow. I am sure that we will get many victories as a team if I can realize my full potential. Then we will see it at the end of the year ”.
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