Baseball prince Shohei Ohtani got knocked around in his last start against the Red Sox and had to leave the game after two innings due to a blister on his pitching hand. That was a bummer, mostly because blisters have a way of being incurable nuisances capable of undermining entire seasons. So when Ohtani took the…
Sunday brought most American baseball fans their first good look at what kind of pitcher Angels two-way prospect Shohei Ohtani might be. What they saw was pretty fuckin’ good.
In the end—or, in the beginning, I suppose, given that it took him all of two days to eliminate 23 teams from the running—Japanese two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani’s criteria for a Major League team had nothing to do with money, and nothing to do with the DH. Instead, the very first cut apparently came down to pure…
According to reports, the MLB players’ union has signed off on a new posting system that was agreed to by Nippon Professional Baseball and MLB. This means that Shohei Otani—the most interesting man in baseball, a legitimate five-tool star and an ace pitcher whose fastball has been clocked up to 103 mph—is free to come…
Japanese baseball star Shohei Otani, who is in the midst of a Ruthian season for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters—the two-way stud had a 1.86 ERA and 174 strikeouts in 140 innings, to go along with 27 homers and a .322/.416/.588 triple slash in 2016—is reportedly ready to play ball in America. He’ll be doing so on the…
After a thigh injury kept him from pitching for most of July and August, Japanese two-way playing phenom Shohei Otani made his first start in seven weeks today. Half of MLB’s front offices sent someone to Japan to watch him:
Shohei Otani, the most interesting baseball player in the world, did not play at the World Baseball Classic this year, and that sucks. His absence deprived us of the chance to see one of the best hitters and pitchers in Japan in action on the world stage, so for now we’ll just have to settle for this big-ass dong…
Unfortunately for Team Japan, who have won two of the first three World Baseball Classics, Shohei Otani won’t be able to pitch in this year’s tournament due to a sore right ankle. He was scheduled to start the team’s first game on March 7 against Cuba but recently told reporters in Arizona, where the Hokkaido…
It could be a while before we see Japanese two-way superstar Shohei Otani in MLB. The new collective bargaining agreement has strict caps on international free agent spending for players under 25, which should be a deterrent for the 22-year-old Otani—though his current team, the Nippon Ham Fighters, has discussed the…
Some things that 22-year-old Shohei Otani has done this year: break his own record for the fastest pitch ever thrown in Japanese baseball (102 mph), post a 1.86 ERA and 0.96 WHIP in 20 games as a starting pitcher, hit really goddamn well when he wasn’t pitching (.322/.416/.588 with 22 home runs), and put all of that…
There is a 22-year-old professional baseball player who owns the following 2016 stats: 123 innings pitched, 2.12 ERA, 151 strikeouts. He has also put up these stats this season: 288 at-bats, .326/.425/.611, 22 home runs.
