It’s a little bit of a cliché that all-time nice basketball gamers like so as to add a component to their recreation each offseason. You come again from summer time trip and Tim Duncan has a brand new submit transfer or LeBron’s capturing three-pointers now. This truism informs one thing I prefer to ask baseball gamers throughout breakout seasons: Do you could have a watch on the following factor you need to study? Typically you get some banality about being extra constant, or simply an outright “no,” however from time to time a pitcher will reveal a hitherto hidden want to study a palmball, so it’s price asking.
No one has embodied this drive for self-improvement like Shohei Ohtani. The person who already does the whole lot confirmed up at the beginning of 2024 and determined to show his plus operating velocity from a curiosity right into a weapon. Shotime had beforehand topped out within the 20-steal vary, and often with fairly ugly success charges. In 2022, he wanted 20 makes an attempt to swipe simply 11 luggage; that yr, he additionally stole the George Springer Trophy for Most Mystifyingly Unhealthy Basestealer for a Quick Man.
In 2024, Ohtani set new profession highs in batting common, residence runs, runs scored, RBI, and wRC+; he additionally swallowed Rickey Henderson and stole his powers. Ohtani greater than doubled his earlier profession excessive in stolen bases with 59, and in simply 63 makes an attempt.
In 2025, Ohtani will return to the mound for the primary time in additional than a yr, however that doesn’t imply he can’t add one more ingredient to his recreation.
Ohtani’s 2024 MVP marketing campaign was all of the extra spectacular as a result of he didn’t use his two-way potential, which is the very attribute that turned him into one of many world’s most celebrated athletes. Simply enjoying on one aspect of the ball, he put up a extremely MVP-worthy 9.1 WAR, and he did it regardless of transport again greater than 17 runs’ price of defensive worth.
As a result of Ohtani performed a lot, and solely at DH, he completed within the backside 10 in defensive worth out of the greater than 1,400 gamers who appeared within the majors final season. And truthfully, I believe that’s unbecoming for a star of his caliber. It’s time for Ohtani to cease mooching off his buddies and decide up a glove. He’s been using his teammates’ coattails, spending half the sport chomping blissfully away on sunflower seeds and whatnot, for a lot too lengthy.
It’s time for Ohtani to earn his maintain in middle area.
Why not? The 2 issues a middle fielder wants to have the ability to do are run and throw. Ohtani can run — he simply stole 59 bases, bear in mind? — and he can positively throw. The final time Ohtani pitched commonly, his four-seamer averaged 96.8 mph off the mound, and he’s hit 100 mph 75 occasions in his main league profession. I determine he can in all probability let it rip on a crow-hop from middle.
In line with Baseball Savant, Ohtani’s dash velocity — 28.1 toes per second in 2024 — is merely plus, quite than elite. However mix that along with his arm energy and also you’re on to one thing. In 2024, solely 5 middle fielders who matched Ohtani’s dash velocity additionally put up an outfield arm energy rating of 93.0 mph or higher on the Baseball Savant leaderboard.
Three of these gamers — Kevin Kiermaier, Brenton Doyle, and Pete Crow-Armstrong — are elite middle fielders. (Or “had been,” in Kiermaier’s case. Greatest needs in your retirement, Kev.) A fourth, Jose Siri, is baseball’s Adama Traoré or Darrius Heyward-Bey, and the Mets’ David Stearns is the newest head of baseball ops to imagine that he can unlock the potential in Siri’s world-class athleticism. And to be honest, Siri had an awesome defensive season in 2024. (Participant no. 5 is Giants rookie Grant McCray. I’ve no pithy commentary about him.)
Bodily, there’s no motive why Ohtani couldn’t play middle area. However what does the tape say? Earlier this week, I made a crack about how he in all probability doesn’t even personal a glove, however clearly that’s not true. Ohtani has thrown almost 500 innings off main league mounds in his profession, and so they do encourage pitchers to put on a mitt.
For that matter, in 2021, Ohtani did make his manner out to the outfield for 8 1/3 innings, however he didn’t should make a play the entire time he was on the market. On this respect alone, Ohtani and I are alike. My Little League coaches additionally most popular to maintain me on the bench, and on the uncommon events wherein they had been pressured to ship me out to the sector, they caught me out in proper and prayed that no person hit the ball my manner.
However I digress.
Ohtani’s by no means needed to area the ball within the outfield, however he has needed to defend his place at pitcher. Simply not that a lot.
In line with Baseball Savant, Ohtani has had simply 42 balls hit to him in his total main league profession. That doesn’t appear to be very many. It’s like one each different begin. Now, I believed that this was an artifact of Ohtani getting a number of strikeouts and fly balls — he’s almost as not like Logan Webb on the mound as he’s within the batter’s field. Perhaps he’s some outlier, or he’s beneath directions to not overexert himself by lunging after balls hit over the mound.
Effectively, these 42 fielding alternatives — not counting overlaying first base or backing up third or residence — symbolize some 3.7% of all of the balls in play Ohtani has allowed in his profession. Since Ohtani debuted in 2018, 626 pitchers have allowed 400 or extra balls in play in common season motion. And Ohtani is sort of precisely within the center — 317th within the proportion of balls in play hit to the pitcher.
We do get some enjoyable outliers. Brusdar Graterol is much and away no. 1, at 9.4%. On the opposite finish is Sean Doolittle, who had simply two balls hit to him out of 454 whole balls in play throughout that point interval. What a waste, since Doolittle was once a primary baseman and presumably is aware of the best way to play protection.
Anyway, 42 performs… that’s not quite a bit. Actually, it’s in that magic zone the place it’s sufficiently small for me to look at each single one in lower than an hour, however sufficiently big that I can attempt to attract some conclusions from the information.
In order that’s what I did. I watched each ball that’s been hit to Ohtani since 2018, and coded them into one among a number of classes. Now, if I took that coding information to Baseball Data Options, they’d ship me to my room with out supper. A schema that features classes like “appears like he’s chasing a kitten” is simply so helpful. However there have been certainly 5 performs that match that description. Right here’s one.
See what I imply? You’ve bought to shuffle over and encompass the little varmint and scoop it up earlier than it wriggles away.
However more often than not, Ohtani didn’t even have to do this a lot. Half of his fielding probabilities had been mushy one- or multi-hoppers that got here off pitches the batter smashed straight into the bottom in entrance of residence plate. I do know I simply mentioned I used to be a horrendous Little League defender, however I genuinely assume I may have made most of those performs myself. Right here’s a consultant instance.
So Ohtani’s an awesome athlete, and a reliable defensive pitcher. Does that imply he’s suited to the outfield? I’ll reply that query thusly: I needed to replace my coding methodology midway by.
I began noticing a standard thread when Ohtani had extra to do than scoop up a Baltimore chop. He regarded frantic, even by the requirements of the life-and-death reflexive motions required to area a pointy comebacker. I believed he was getting Charlie Browned — you understand, in these Peanuts panels the place Charlie Brown provides up a line drive that comes again by the field so quick it knocks his garments off.
However that wasn’t fairly proper.
5 years in the past, Craig Goldstein — the Baseball Prospectus editor-in-chief and a detailed pal of mine, if “friendship” could be understood to imply “years of unrelenting mutual annoyance” — produced a groundbreaking sliver of baseball perception: “Dustin Could operating after a foul ball has excessive Waluigi vitality.”
(You understand Waluigi, the chaotic all-elbows-and-knees Nintendo character.) Ohtani, not less than as a defender, has Waluigi vitality too. What does that imply? Effectively, behold this routine 1-5-3 groundout.
Or this smattering of nonetheless photographs from varied performs Ohtani has made over time.
Whoops!
Whee!
Clang!
All proper, that final one bounced off Ohtani for a single. So he doesn’t at all times make the out.
This can be a staggeringly gifted athlete, able to feats of stability and physique management you or I may barely fathom. However when he fields his place — even when he makes the play — Ohtani generally strikes like a new child wildebeest. And that’s probably not the vibe you need to take into the outfield, the place there’s all method of stuff to run into.
Middle area could be a treacherous land even for expert operators. I can’t watch an outfielder go up towards a fence with out reliving Ken Griffey Jr.’s damaged wrist, and that was one thing like 25 years in the past. Aaron Rowand’s faceplant, Byron Buxton’s one-man automobile crash within the AL Wild Card Recreation… On second thought, I’m unsure it’s good to take a person who appears like this when he fields the ball…
…and provides him a fence to run into.
So I suppose Ohtani must discover one other avenue for skilled development, and the Dodgers will maintain operating platoons on the market in middle. Even Superman can’t do the whole lot.
