There is something terrifying about a player who considers his own excellence to be merely a work in progress. Last week against the Toronto Blue Jays, Shohei Ohtani had his roughest pitching outing of the season, struggling with his command and fighting his own mechanics for nearly every pitch. And yet, the result was a familiar one: six innings of work with just one unearned run crossing the plate. MISRYOUM noted that while he only managed two strikeouts, his ability to simply navigate through the chaos and get outs is what separates him from the pack. It wasn’t his best, but it was enough to stifle the opposition.
“It was a grind,” manager Dave Roberts said of Ohtani’s start. “You can see it. He didn’t feel synced up with his delivery. You can see by the misses. He was fighting himself the entire outing. But obviously, the compete comes into play, the stuff comes into play, and he found a way to get through six innings giving up one run. Pretty impressive, to be quite honest, given how he felt.”
Beyond the mound, the narrative of Shohei Ohtani remains the biggest story in baseball. He recently shattered Ichiro Suzuki’s 2009 record for the longest on-base streak by a Japanese-born player, hitting 45 games and counting. While he currently holds a perfect 0.00 ERA over 12 innings, he is simultaneously maintaining a dangerous .955 OPS as the Dodgers’ designated hitter. Honestly, the stats are starting to feel less like professional analysis and more like a fever dream. Between his 28.2-inning scoreless streak and his offensive production, he is putting up numbers that make even the most seasoned observers pause and double-check the box score.
He is just getting started, though. With his sights set on his first Cy Young Award to add to his overflowing trophy case, the right-hander has signaled that his early-season inconsistencies are standard procedure. He is aiming for peak performance by May, a terrifying thought for any pitcher or hitter currently standing in his way. As he prepares to face the New York Mets, the league should take note: when Shohei Ohtani identifies that he has another gear to reach, he rarely misses his mark. The rest of the MLB has been warned, though it’s hard to imagine they didn’t already know what was coming.