{"id":62014,"date":"2018-04-02T09:13:30","date_gmt":"2018-04-02T09:13:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=62014"},"modified":"2018-04-02T09:13:30","modified_gmt":"2018-04-02T09:13:30","slug":"shohei-ohtani-angels-two-way-phenom-in-control-as-he-wins-mlb-pitching-debut","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/sports\/shohei-ohtani-angels-two-way-phenom-in-control-as-he-wins-mlb-pitching-debut.html","title":{"rendered":"Shohei Ohtani: Angels’ two-way phenom in control as he wins MLB pitching debut"},"content":{"rendered":"

Shohei Ohtani: Angels’ two-way phenom in control as he wins MLB pitching debut<\/span><\/strong><\/h2>\n

Shohei Ohtani came to meet the media Sunday with a new friend \u2013 the game ball from his first Major League victory.<\/span><\/p>\n

He\u2019d thrown 92 pitches and six innings of the Angels\u2019 7-4 win over Oakland and he wanted the game ball, badly it seemed, although he didn\u2019t say so. He\u2019d collected the ball from his first big league hit when he was the Angels\u2019 DH Thursday and gave that to his parents. They aren\u2019t getting this one though. At least not yet.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ll have to think about it,\u201d he said when asked where the ball was going.<\/span><\/p>\n

With the exception of a couple of his 92 pitches, Ohtani seemed to have a vivid clarity about where his ball was going Sunday. Matt Chapman crushed a three-run homer in the second inning to give the A\u2019s a 3-2 lead, but that was the only inning in which Oakland got a hit off Ohtani as he retired 14 of the final 15 men he faced.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cMajor League hitters hit the ball,\u201d manager Mike Scioscia said of Ohtani\u2019s second-inning woes. \u201cOutside of that one stretch of three hitters in the second inning, that\u2019s about as well as you can pitch.\u201cHe finished strong in the fifth and sixth; he carried his stuff through 90-plus pitches. We expected it, but it\u2019s good that he got to that marker. He felt good after 92, and I\u2019m sure he had a little bit more in him.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe. He came off the field after the sixth patting his chest. The A\u2019s Khris Davis had just missed a hanging splitter and popped it up.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a one-run game, last thing I wanted to do was give up the big fly and tie the game,\u201d Ohtani said through a translator. \u201cI had two strikes and I hung it. When I released it, I thought it was going to be a home run. I was pretty lucky right there.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ohtani sat at 98 mph for most of his six innings. He hit 100 mph twice, and one of those, a Stephen Piscotty single in front of Chapman\u2019s third inning homer, was hit well. For the most part, however, the A\u2019s looked as if they hadn\u2019t seen him before. And, of course they hadn\u2019t, since the 23-year-old is in the U.S. for the first time after playing in Japan.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cI thought he had really good stuff,\u201d Chapman said. \u201cLuckily he just left that one over the plate. I think he might have been a little excited early and some of those pitches were up in the zone. But he kind of settled down and his split-finger started playing off his fastball. It was hard to pick up.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Ohtani, who\u2019d made his big league batting debut with a 1-for-5 game against the A\u2019s on Thursday, became the first player since 1920 to both start separate games as a hitter and as a pitcher when at 1:13 p.m. PT he threw a 96-mph fastball for a strike to the A\u2019s Marcus Semien.<\/span><\/p>\n

Much is made of a comparison of Ohtani to Babe Ruth, the most famous combination hitter\/pitcher in the sport\u2019s 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\u2019s Joe Bush and the Dodgers\u2019 Clarence Mitchell at the start of the 1920 season. Ruth made 143 of his 147 career starts between 1914-19.<\/span><\/p>\n

Plans are still unclear as to how often Ohtani will hit, but based on Sunday, finding room for him in the Angels\u2019 rotation will be no problem whatsoever. Scioscia said over the weekend that he didn\u2019t see a problem with Ohtani batting on a day he throws between starts so he could get a couple of games, probably as the DH, in between starts, depending on schedules and matchups.<\/span><\/p>\n

During spring training, Ohtani pitched in just two Cactus League games with a 27.00 ERA, and even when he was throwing in minor league, intrasquad and B games, he\u2019d never thrown more than 85 pitches. On Sunday he had 84 pitches through five innings, but with the Angels holding just a 4-3 lead at the time, Scioscia wasn\u2019t hesitant to send Ohtani out to pitch the sixth.<\/span><\/p>\n

By that time the Angels had reclaimed the lead on an RBI double from Mike Trout and subsequent sacrifice fly from Justin Upton in the fifth. The lead would hold at 4-3 until Ohtani was long since out of the game. The Angels tacked on three runs in the seventh and the A\u2019s weren\u2019t able to do much until scoring once and loading the bases with one out in the ninth before Keynan Middleton got the last two outs.<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-https:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/sports\/mlb\/2018\/04\/01\/shohei-ohtani-wins-mlb-pitching-debut\/477207002\/<\/span><\/p>\n

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