shohei ohtani alert

no hitting the As through 7

he's just doing this to spite clemenza

not quite spiteful enough, i guess

He’ll just have to be content with being a more accurate comparison to Babe Ruth I guess.

Clemenza's a fan! (Say that in a Bob Dole voice.) My objection--still is--was more to mlb.com giving him screaming headlines every time he picked up a fork--specifically for accomplishments that weren't especially significant once you have already established he's a two-way player and will do a variety of things that are a by-product of that.

OHTANI CHARTS NEW TERRITORY!!! And then you'd read on to find out he was the first player to hit a double and strike out the side in the same game since x (almost always Ruth).

Seeing him pitch against the Jays this summer helped open my eyes--love his motion. And he's going be on the shortlist of greatest seasons ever by an MVP runner-up, I assume.

he needed 9 innings to qualify for the ERA title (apparently would have been the first player to ever qualify both as a pitcher and a hitter?) and pitched 8…

Two way players being so common these days ofc

My objection--still is--was more to ilxor.com giving him screaming headlines every time he picked up a fork--specifically for accomplishments that weren't especially significant once you have already established he's a two-way player guy who hits runs and will occasionally hit runs do a variety of things that are a by-product of that.

This is obvs not entirely serious… but I don’t get how the guy doing shit that is extraordinary is the one overhyped.

Because they were hyping things that weren't always extraordinary. Some of the things they were hyping were bound to happen the second his name was penciled into the lineup. Quirk of mine--really not a big deal.

A perfect example is the one I posted earlier in this thread:

"Hitting third and making his first start on the mound at Fenway Park, Ohtani became the first starting pitcher to bat in one of the top four spots in a game at the historic ballpark since Babe Ruth did so on Sept. 20, 1919."

That was a headline story. He's the starting pitcher that day, and he's batting near the top of the order, as you would expect. The game hasn't started yet.

Btw

OHTANI CHARTS NEW TERRITORY!!! And then you'd read on to find out he was the first player to hit a double and strike out the side in the same game since x (almost always Ruth).

I don’t think it’s unreasonable to hold this against him given the majority of people who saw Babe Ruth play are now dead. We are either more than a century or getting on from some of these feats!

reasonable, not unreasonable

I get what you're saying, but I don't think you get what I'm saying. In the headline I cited, the feat is that he's been penciled into the lineup. He hasn't actually done anything yet.

Our man has apparently signed a 1 year 30m deal a

Pitched another great game. If they gave him the MVP, I'd be surprised and it wouldn't be my vote, but I wouldn't argue against it very strenuously.

2023 ZiPS are out for the angels:

https://i.imgur.com/W4gn6pI.png

Trout's #1 comp is Mickey Mantle!
Ohtani's #1 pitching comp is Roger Clemens O_O

(Ohtani's #1 batting comp is Earl Torgeson, who i am much less familiar with)

Relatable

ファスナーに嫌われる😂 pic.twitter.com/Q8Lyz9e31Q

— splendid (@mintlibido) April 17, 2023

lol extremely

hitting and pitching today, not so much

Zip’s a pain but fuck the rain

3 IP with 8ks

2 for 2 at the plate

Insane.

That 3rd inning was hard to watch though. Had to switch to the O’s game. Glad he was able to come back and give a couple more innings.

Very strange how wild he has been this year. Almost like no one knows what he is throwing, shohei, catcher, umpire, batter, both teams, viewers. It’s all just chance coming out of his hand. Very effective tho

Fangraphs piece about his recent difficulties on the mound.

I wonder also if the current league wide popularity of sweepers is contributing to people hitting his better, alongside his shaky command. I’ve only seen him pitch a couple of times this season and the first time he was godlike and the second his command was wild and he looked like a completely different player. Hope he can iron it out. That ratio of offspeeds to fastballs is puzzling.

Patrick Sandoval just posted this photo of Shohei Ohtani eating Funyuns 😭 pic.twitter.com/jf7i12zX9e

— MLB Life (@MLBLife) May 23, 2023

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FxnvjXRWAAAQOdu.jpg

Two Angels just hangin

My new future hobby: three-degrees-of photo triptychs.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/babetedreggiesho.jpg

Love it.

1W-2L in his last 7 starts...

he's absolutely going off.

pulled this quote from a news story KM posted years ago on the other Ohtani thread:

To better understand Otani I spoke with Anri Uechi of Kyodo News, who covers Masahiro Tanaka and the Yankees but also has followed the career of Otani. I asked Uechi for a comps on Otani as a pitcher and hitter. He came up with a blend of Yu Darvish — only with more velocity – and Christian Yelich. Hey, not bad.

really underselling him in retrospect!

I like every time I watch an Angels game at home and you see the stadium absolutely plastered with ads for Japan’s top cat food and the like.

i watched him cover 1b on that jared walsh diving catch yesterday and watching him run ro cover as a pitcher is insane.

Don’t pitchers sometimes have to cover the base depending on the play?

Lol this guy sucks

Jon Heyman briefly spoke with Arte Moreno at this week’s MLB owners’ meetings, and asked him about trading Ohtani:

“We want to win, and it’s nice to have him in the lineup.”https://t.co/NffpqJhRPG pic.twitter.com/4k6W7ntjr4

— Beyond The Halo (@BeyondTheHalo) June 16, 2023

Don’t pitchers sometimes have to cover the base depending on the play?

― TY FRANCE HATES TEXAS CONFIRMED (gyac), Friday, June 16, 2023 2:00 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

No i mean he is absurdly fast. pitchers on the whole are... not

Oh ok, it might be skewed in my mind cos I’ve watched a ton of Tim Lincecum games & I’ve seen him do that a few times.

He's so friendly about it too

The Friendliest Out. pic.twitter.com/SFzkrTq1dY

— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 3, 2023

Even with Franco and Semien doing what they're doing, feels like he's starting to lap the field for MVP.

!

Another HR, up to 24.

Seems like an ok player

casual 0.4 WAR pitching 0.4 WAR hitting day

he would now be leading the AL in fWAR even without pitching.................as a fulltime DH

not going to say what else i'm thinking for fear of jinxes

god this is so crazy, like imagine a QB throwing 60 TDs every year while also giving up the fewest yards per attempt on defense as a safety and picking off 8 passes a year

he would now be leading the AL in fWAR even without pitching.................as a fulltime DH

and honestly he is clearly underrated as a hitter by fangraphs WAR because of their DH penalty, which i think has merit when applied to guys who aren't good enough to get on the field as defenders. but that's not why he DHs. over a full season he's prob at least a full win better than what they say

the DH penalty thing still warps my brain a little, I reached out to sean forman a couple of years ago with this same question and he explained that because he’s replacing a DH in the lineup rather than a pitcher, he gets the DH replacement adjustment. but I do feel like having him do both roles has adds value to their roster in other ways that WAR doesn’t capture. I feel similarly about utility players like kris bryant back when he was good

he frees up a roster spot, one would think that should give him a bonus

i understand why they give him the DH replacement since he is playing DH, but the point of it is to penalize hitters who don’t have the ability to play the field, and we know that isn’t the case with ohtani. i’m sure it wouldn’t be that difficult to calculate his hitting WAR as if he was a league average corner OF but that math is beyond me. it would prob be a more accurate reflection of who he is as a player tho, even if it wouldn’t capture what he literally did (or didn’t do) on the field

i mean he's a HOF-level talent at two positions, not Darvish meets Yelich but rather Verlander meets Judge, and the DH penalty is something i had trouble with when it came to normal extremely good DHs like Nelson Cruz or Ortiz. my son asked me if he was "better than Mike Trout" and i said he is now but also prob better than Trout ever was in overall value too. unreal that the angels are wasting both of those guys of course but that's been said a million times before.

they may actually make at least the wild card this year but that’s far from a given, they’re in a dogfight with a half dozen teams and their roster is in disrepair as per usual… brandon drury and moustakas hitting 3rd & 4th for them last night. thankfully i don’t think he’s going to re-sign w/ them

Ohtani would def be MVP at this point, if he can drag that roster to the playoffs it would be unanimous. it might require a little more help, i guess Trout could improve a bit more the rest of the way. which isn't to say he's been bad, he's on pace for 6 bWAR or something. Ohtani is on pace for over 12 of course.

i think he's a total runaway in the AL regardless of how the season goes. the only player who would maybe have a case over him is acuna