Shohei Ohtani Proving Two-Way MLB Stardom Is Far from a Myth

It took about 100 years, but Major League Baseball has finally found a worthy successor to the Great Bambino.

Or so it would seem after Shohei Ohtani followed up a win in his MLB pitching debut by launching home runs in back-to-back-to-back games and then authoring yet another dominant start in his second trip to the mound.

The 23-year-old Japanese phenom made his first start for the Los Angeles Angels on April 1 and earned a win with six mostly dominant innings. Two days later, he collected his first major league home run as the Angels' designated hitter.

According to MLB Stat of the Day, nobody had seen anything like this since Babe Ruth in 1921:

As if to prove a point, Ohtani homered again off two-time Cy Young Award winner Corey Kluber the very next day and again the day after that with a 112.4 mph, 449-foot clout off A's starter Daniel Gossett.

Ohtani's most recent feat? That would be taking a perfect game into the seventh inning in his Sunday start against the A's. He lost his bid for a perfecto on a single by Marcus Semien but still walked away with 12 strikeouts to just one hit and one walk allowed.

Because Ohtani is only six games into his MLB career, the usual small-sample-size disclaimers apply. Not every start will be dominant. Not every at-bat will result in a dinger. And so on.

Even still, there's no ignoring the smell of the crow that Ohtani is cooking up for his critics.

He had a lot of those (ahem) by the time spring training came to a close. He arrived to his first camp with the Angels with an .859 OPS and a 2.52 ERA on his Nippon Professional Baseball record but exited it with only a .347 OPS and a 27.00 ERA to show for his first taste of major league action.

Ohtani looked as bad as those numbers suggested. As a pitcher, he battled up-and-down fastball velocity and an inconsistent release point. As a hitter, he struggled to put good swings on all sorts of pitches.

However, what looked like a real struggle at the time now looks like one of the greatest hustles in recent memory.

Ohtani didn't look like a pitcher who was still trying to find his way in his debut on the mound. He looked like an up-and-coming ace. His fastball averaged 97.8 mph and touched triple digits. He also got whiff after whiff on his unfathomably nasty splitter, plus a few more on a solid slider.

His fastball dipped to a 96.5 mph average in his second starting assignment, but he made up for that by doing a better job of pitching down in the zone with all his pitches. Ultimately, he earned 24 swings and misses out of just 91 total pitches.

Ben Margot/Associated Press

Although this marks a departure from what Ohtani did in the spring, it must look familiar to anyone who paid close attention to his pitching in Japan.

"He's every bit of a top-end-of-the-rotation starter," said one international scouting director in 2017, per Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com.

The loose consensus on Ohtani's hitting, on the other hand, was that it wasn't as foolproof as his pitching. His meager showing at the plate during the spring underscored that, and he didn't push back against the doubts by going 1-for-5 with just a weakly hit single in his debut as the Angels' DH on March 29.

Well, he's 6-for-13 with three home runs and seven RBI since then. And on the whole, what he's doing at the plate is getting impressive in a hurry.

For starters, Ohtani is averaging 97.3 mph in exit velocity on his batted balls. Through Friday, that ranked 4th among all hitters who'd put at least 10 balls in play.

Even better, eight of the 14 balls Ohtani had put in play were clocked at over 100 mph. That's 57.1 percent, which ranked here among qualified hitters:

1. Miguel Sano, MIN: 66.7%
2. Shohei Ohtani, LAA: 57.1%
3. Cory Spangenberg, SD: 54.6%
4. Yoan Moncada, CHW: 53.3%

Yup. Right there. Beneath only a 6'4", 260-pounder who's known (or should be known, anyway) far and wide for his ability to demolish baseballs.

To one extent, this speaks to the raw power that Ohtani has within his own 6'4" frame. To another, more interesting extent, it also speaks to his ability to adjust.

It became apparent during spring training that Ohtani was green against good breaking balls. This was perhaps to be expected for a hitter coming from a league in which breaking balls aren't as common, but it still had some scouts worried.

"He's basically like a high school hitter because he's never seen a good curveball," said one to Jeff Passan of Yahoo Sports. "He's seen fastballs and changeups. And you're asking a high school hitter to jump to the major leagues?"

But rather than stay the same and hope for different results, Ohtani made a change with his swing mechanics. It was highlighted on a Japanese broadcast and picked up by baseball writer Sung Min Kim on Twitter:

Ohtani ditched his leg kick and switched to more of a toe tap for his timing mechanism. Such an adjustment won't work for every hitter. But in his case, less pre-swing movement had the potential to allow for better reads on pitches.

As if on cue, curveballs went from being Ohtani's nemesis to being the victim of his first career homer:

The only nit to pick was that Josh Tomlin put that curveball in a good spot for Ohtani to hit it: the low-and-inside quadrant in the strike zone. That's the happy zone for left-handed sluggers, so of course he crushed it. Indeed, the same can be said of the other two hits he collected that day.

Kluber must have been paying attention, because his first move against Ohtani was to pound him with hard stuff in the upper half of the zone. It worked, as he punched Ohtani out on just four pitches.

But Ohtani was ready the next time. When Kluber missed a low-and-away target and sent another fastball in the upper half of the zone, there went Ohtani's second homer:

So in short order, Ohtani has demonstrated that he's capable of not just making physical and mental adjustments on the fly but also benefiting from them as well.

Angels manager Mike Scioscia said it well: "You see the bat speed, you see the power, he's making some adjustments, he's understanding the league."

It's just a matter of time before both MLB's hitters and pitchers adjust back to Ohtani. And it'll only become easier for them to do so as the scouting books on his arm and bat become more detailed.

And yet, Ohtani has already demonstrated that he's capable of fighting winning battles on both fronts. His arm is one of the most awesome weapons in baseball. Even if his bat isn't quite up to par, his approach and power are not to be underestimated.

Put another way, he can be a great pitcher-slash-hitter precisely because he looks like both an excellent pitcher and an excellent hitter.

Spring stats courtesy of MLB.com. Other stats courtesy of Baseball Reference and Baseball Savant.