I don't know if Shohei Ohtani will be able to hit major-league pitching. We're going to need a lot of evidence to make that call, and one dribbler through the right side of the infield isn't going to be enough to prove it. That's just not how hitting works.
On the mound, one start doesn't tell you everything you need to know, but it's a lot easier to adopt an "I know it when I see it" philosophy. And after watching Ohtani's MLB pitching debut Sunday, I feel pretty confident in saying: I know it, and I saw it.
We knew coming in Ohtani was a better prospect as a pitcher than a hitter, and the scouting reports have raved about his stuff. But scouting reports can't quite prepare you for the sight of a skinny 23-year-old stepping on the mound and looking like some ungodly combination of Noah Syndergaard and Masahiro Tanaka.
That's lofty praise, but it's not unwarranted. In fact, on Sunday, Ohtani out-Syndergaard-ed Syndergaard, and he out-Tanaka-ed Tanaka in their respective debuts.
Ohtani averaged 98.3 mph with his fastball, per BrooksBaseball.net, topping out at 100.1, with five swinging strikes with his fastball; Syndergaard averaged 98.3 as well in his season debut, while topping out at 100.1, with four whiffs. And Ohtani's splitter compared very favorably to Tanaka's signature pitch, as he induced 10 swinging strikes on 24 splitters; Tanaka had just two swinging strikes on 15 splitters.
And the slider? With one notable exception – a hung one that Matt Chapman launched into the seats in left-center – it was pretty good too, as he picked up three swinging strikes on 26 pitches, with nine called strikes to boot.
| Type | Velo (Max) | Count | Strikes/% | Swings/% | Whiffs/% |
| Four-seam Fastball | 98.3 (100.1) | 39 | 24 / 61.5% | 19 / 48.7% | 5 / 12.8% |
| Slider | 82.7 (85.9) | 26 | 20 / 76.9% | 11 / 42.3% | 3 / 11.5% |
| Curveball | 75.4 (76.1) | 3 | 2 / 66.7% | 1 / 33.3% | 0 / 0.0% |
| Splitter | 89.7 (91.2) | 24 | 17 / 70.8% | 16 / 66.7% | 10 / 41.7% |
*All pitch data comes from BrooksBaseball.net
In fact, that was pretty much the only mistake Ohtani made. He left some sliders up in the zone in the second inning, and allowed three straight hits, including that three-run homer by Chapman in the inning. In his other five innings of work combined, he allowed no hits, and just one walk. And while the A's are likely to be a free-swinging bunch, they also project to be one of the top-10 offenses in baseball, by BaseballProspectus, so this wasn't exactly some cakewalk matchup we could expect to roll over for Ohtani.
There's no guarantee Ohtani will be as good as he looked Sunday for the rest of the season. Catch any pitcher who throws high-90s on the right day, and he'll look unhittable; Nick Pivetta racked up 10 strikeouts and 15 swinging strikes in a start against the Cardinals last June, and still ended up with a 6.02 ERA for the season.
Still, you can't fake 99, and you can't fake the kind of splitter Ohtani brings to the table. Hitters will adjust after getting some film on him, and then Ohtani will have to make adjustments of his own. He'll need to locate his pitches a bit more consistently than he did Sunday when he left some fastballs and sliders up in the zone. And he'll have a tough test coming up in his second start, which is likely to come this Sunday against these same A's; how much of his success was just the element of surprise? We'll find out.
However, Ohtani's debut went about as well as you could have hoped. If you sat him coming off his rough spring, you're probably regretting it. The good news is, Ohtani looked like the kind of pitcher you won't be sitting ever again this season. He looked like he was worth the hype and then some.
