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OAKLAND - Shohei Ohtani had a chance for a too-short first big league start, but the Los Angeles Angels’ Japanese newcomer rallied after a second-inning stumble.
The right-hander retired 14 of the final 15 men he faced and earned the win in the Angels' 7-4 victory over the Athletics.
Ohtani, who’d made his big league batting debut with a 1-for-5 game against the A’s on Thursday, became the first player since 1920 to both start separate games as a hitter and as a pitcher in the first 10 days of a season when, at 1:13 PT Sunday afternoon he threw a 96-mph fastball for a strike to the A’s Marcus Semien.
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The first four A’s went down in order, Ohtani had an early 2-0 lead and had hit 100 mph on the radar gun before Oakland got three straight hits in the second inning, the capper being a three-run bomb from Matt Chapman, who jumped on an 83-mph slider.
From there, however, the A’s didn’t have much of a chance against Ohtani, whose second wind including streaks of six and eight consecutive men retired before he turned the ball over to reliever Cam Bedrosian to start the bottom of the seventh.
During spring training, Ohtani pitched in just two Cactus League games with a 27.00 ERA, and even when pitching in minor league, intrasquad and B games, he’d never thrown more than 85 pitches. On Sunday he had 84 pitches through five innings, but with the Angels holding a 4-3 lead, manager Mike Scioscia wasn’t hesitant to send Ohtani out to pitch the sixth.
Much is made of a comparison of Ohtani to Babe Ruth, the most famous combination hitter/pitcher in the sports history. But the last players to start games both as a hitter and a pitcher in the first 10 games of a season were the Red Sox’s Joe Bush and the Dodgers’ Clarence Mitchell at the start of the 1920 season.
Before he was done, Ohtani threw 92 pitches, 63 of them strikes. He threw first-pitch strikes 14 times in 22 tries, including against eight of the first nine men he faced.
He did have a little trouble in the second when the A’s got hits from Matt Joyce on a 98-mph fastball and Stephen Piscotty on a 100-mph heater, but after Chapman crushed a subsequent slider for his first home of the season, the A’s offense wasn’t heard from again.
Ohtani hit 100 mph twice in the game, to Matt Olson in the first inning and to Piscotty in the second.
Read Again Brow https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/2018/04/01/shohei-ohtani-mlb-debut-100-mph-angels/476938002/
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