Last night, facing the defending AL champion Rays, Shohei Ohtani pitched five shutout innings. He struck out seven batters, walked six, and allowed just one hit.
That’s not exactly true, of course: one of Ohtani’s walks should’ve been a strikeout, but the Angels catcher Kurt Suzuki caught the breaking pitch funny, and it’s hard to complain about the ump missing one when a starter is throwing more balls than strikes.
More broadly, Ohtani’s line from last night accurately reflects how he’s pitched all year: the Angels two-way star has been very, very wild, and he has also been nearly unhittable. Armed with a fastball that can clip 100 miles-an-hour and an array of plus-plus breaking pitches, watching Ohtani pitch feels like you’ve stumbled onto a complicated game of catch, with the batter just there to keep up appearances.
The stats back this up: Ohtani currently leads AL pitchers in walks allowed, with 19. If he had enough innings to qualify, he would also lead the league in fewest hits-per-nine (Shohei is at 3.4; the AL leader is Dylan Cease at 4.1). Ohtani’s 14.5 strikeout-per-nine rate would sandwich him between Gerrit Cole (14.8) and Shane Bieber (14.3) among AL starting pitchers.
We are, of course, dealing with extremely small sample sizes: it’s only May, after all. And in the case of Shohei Ohtani, there is a good chance that we will only get a small sample sizes: being a full-time DH on one’s off-days makes it slightly more difficult to reliably pitch in the rotation every fifth or sixth day.
But even small samples can give us some insights, so I thought I’d ask the question: which pitchers in history have echoed Ohtani’s penchant for unhittable wildness? And what do their careers suggest for him going forward?
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Here are the wild unhittables: pitchers who have led their leagues in:
- Most Walks,
- Most K/9, and
- Fewest Hits/9
- Nolan Ryan. The obvious one. If I asked you to name a pitcher who led his league in walks, strikeouts-per-nine, and fewest hits-per-nine, 99% of you would cite Nolan Ryan. And Ryan is, of course, the gold standard for successful wildness, having accomplished this dubious feat in four separate seasons (’72, ’74, ’76, ’78), all while pitching in Anaheim.
- Another obvious one: Randy Johnson. Like Ohtani, Johnson was a physically imposing player who could throw a fastball through a seagull as a younger player but didn’t always know where the pitches were going. Johnson accomplished the feat in 1992, the year before he became a fixture on Cy Young ballots.
- Bob Feller accomplished the feat in consecutive years, 1938 and 1939. Feller is another obvious candidate: a famous high-strikeout pitcher, but a wild pitcher.
- Sandy Koufax comes very close in 1960. Koufax missed pacing the NL in walks by three, but he had a worse walk rate than leader Bob Buhl, who pitched 50 more innings than Sandy. Koufax paced the league in K/9, and he tied for the lead in fewest H/9 with Ernie Broglio (6.840).
- Johnny Vander Meer also comes very close to meeting the criteria in 1941: he paced the AL in K/9 and fewest hits-per-nine, but he was only second in walks, six behind the leader Kirby Higbe.
- Sudden Sam McDowell accomplished the feat in 1965: McDowell was like Feller: famously hard-throwing, famously wild.
- J.R. Richard accomplished the feat in 1978. Richard was the NL version of Nolan Ryan in the mid-1970’s, a staggeringly talented pitcher whose career ended abruptly because of blood clots.
- Tommy Byrne pulled off the trifecta in 1949, with the New York Yankees. Byrne was a wild thrower who never got over it, finishing with a career walks-per-nine of 6.9, which might be a record for any starting pitcher with more than 100 career decisions. He ‘won wild’: career record was 85-69, and he paced the AL in winning percentage in 1955. Helps to be a Yankee, I guess.
- Toothpick Sam Jones - not to be confused with Sad Sam Jones - pulled off the feat for the Cardinals in 1958. Jones was the first black pitcher to throw a no-hitter in the majors. Paced the league in both walks and strikeouts three times.
That is impressive company: Koufax, Ryan, Feller, and Randy Johnson are all in the Hall-of-Fame, and J.R. Richard was certainly heading in that direction before fate came along and slapped him in the face.
What is striking, in relation to Ohtani, is how many of these pitchers were big pitchers: Randy Johnson (6’10) and J.R. Ricard (6’8) were very tall and lanky. Sam Jones was almost exactly Shohei’s size: 6’4, 200-something…the toothpick in the nickname was a habit of having one in his mouth, not a comment on his litheness. Sam McDowell was Shohei’s size…an inch taller, but the same kind of frame.
During last night’s game, the announcers commented that Ohtani’s struggles with command often come when he pitches with a full wind-up: when he has to pitch from the stretch, he tends to be better at finding the zone. This makes an intuitive sense: pitching from the stretch means that there are fewer moving parts for a pitcher to worry about.
That might explain, too, why Ohtani’s ERA so far (2.41) is so significantly at odds with the number of baserunners he allows (1.39 WHIP). Ohtani puts a lot of runners on, but it is possible that he’s a more effective pitcher when he is forced to pitch from the stretch.
This is a glancing observation, not an in-depth analysis: the take-away I’d encourage you to consider is that Ohtani’s pitcher performance, so far, places him within a specific context: at twenty-six years old, his pitching profile aligns very clearly with pitchers like Sam McDowell, Randy Johnson, and J.R. Richard. He is very, very, wild…but he is also very hard to hit.
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So will Shohei develop into an elite pitcher? I remain skeptical.
Pitching is a skill that requires a capacity to refine and repeat approaches. Committing his off-days as a designated hitter means that Ohtani has another ambition that he has to give equal time to: how to become a better hitter.
Ohtani is a savant: I would count what he has already accomplished this year as the most singular thing I have ever see on a major league field. He does not have to throw a no-hitter while hitting forty homers for me to be sold on what we’re seeing: this is a performance we’re unlikely to see again in our lifetimes.
But Ohtani is playing a sport that requires specialization. If he were blessed with the pinpoint control of Greg Maddux or Zack Greinke, it might be easier to believe that he can add ‘learning to hit’ to his to-do list and predict a long dual-career. But Ohtani isn’t Maddux: his toolbox as a young pitcher is Randy Johnson’s tool box: impressive stuff, no control.
Whatever processes took Randy Johnson from being a hard-but-wild thrower to the pitcher who won multiple Cy Young Awards required a significant commitment of time and energy and deliberate thought. It requires work, and that work that doesn’t leave much space for other pursuits.
Ohtani could be the best pitcher in baseball, and he could be the second-best hitter on the Angels. But vying to do both things does not merely double the challenge ahead of him: it multiplies things exponentially.
Think it through. As an everyday hitter, Ohtani has to swing a bat. I have no idea how often your average hitter swings a bat on a regular day, but I guess that number is in the hundreds. Ohtani cannot practice like other hitters: on days when he pitches, he can’t spent an hour in the batting cage working through a vulnerability to inside fastballs. And that work…hitting…is a stress on his hands, on his fingertips. Pitchers are meticulous about their hands: they have to trim nails and watch for hot spots. That kind of work that runs counter to the demands made on hitters.
And what about in the game? Ohtani was hit by a pitch on Sunday….so his Monday start has to get pushed back two days because the team has to let the elbow heal. It is a massive, complicated juggling act. Jose Abreu knocks into him at home plate, and then he gets a blister: have to postpone that bullpen session now. Have to change the schedule.
The challenges of Ohtani trying to be a pitcher and a hitter are greater challenges than the general public has grasped, and it’s incredible that he’s managed even a month of what he’s done. If he makes it through the full season, I think we’re not going to have any idea how to understand how to sufficiently measure what his impact on his team was.
In the meantime, we’re lucky. We’re lucky to see Ohtani try at something professional baseball hasn’t seen in a century, and we’re lucky that he plays on a team that’s willing to give him the chance to try.
David Fleming is a writer living in western Virginia. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.