Tag Archives: Shohei Ohtani

And the season begins in earnest . . .

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Rate Field

The grounds crew conditions Rate Field in Chicago for Opening Day. Little did they or those fans who did show up know the White Sox would open with—stop the presses! (as we’d have said in ancient times)—a win.

Opening Day is many things. Boring is never one of them. This year’s Opening Day certainly offered further evidence, including but not limited to . . .

Ice, Ice, Shohei Dept.—First, Ice Cube drove the World Series trophy onto the pre-game Dodger Stadium field. Then, 1988 World Series hero Kirk Gibson threw a ceremonial first pitch to 2024 World Series hero Freddie Freeman. Then, Shohei Ohtani finally ironed up in the seventh and hit one out for the badly-needed insurance, enabling the Dodgers to beat the Tigers, 5-4.

That left the Dodgers 3-0 after MLB’s full Opening Day, and one after they swept the Cubs in the Japan Series. I did hear more than a few “Break up the Dodgers” hollers, didn’t I?

This Time They Spelt It Right Dept.—“Traitor,” that is, when Bryce Harper and his Phillies opened against Harper’s former Nationals in Washington . . . and Harper said welcome to 2025 by stuffing the boo birds’ mouths shut with a blast over the right center field fence in the top of the seventh. That kicked the Phillies into overcoming a 1-0 deficit toward winning, 7-3.

That launch tied Harper for the most Opening Day home runs among active players, with six, but this was the first time he did it in Phillies fatigues.

“I love coming in here and playing in this stadium,” said Harper postgame. “I’ve got a lot of great memories in here, as well. Everywhere I go, it’s exactly like this. Some places are louder than others. It’s all the same.” Except that he left Washington a prodigious but lowballed boy to become man of the Phillies’ house since he signed with them for keeps in 2019.

I Can Get Started Dept.: Tyler O’Neill Display—One of the players Harper’s sixth Opening Day blast tied is Orioles outfielder Tyler O’Neill. That’s where the similarities end between them, for now—in the top of the third against the Jays, O’Neill hammered Jose Berrios’s sinker for a home run to make it six straight Opening Days he’s cleared the fences.

O’Neill hit 31 homers and produced an .847 OPS for last year’s Red Sox, before signing with the Orioles this winter as a free agent.

I Can Get Started Dept.: Paul Skenes Display—The indispensable Sarah Langs pointed out that Pirates sophomore Paul Skenes—fresh off his Rookie of the Year season—became the fastest number one draft pick to get his first Opening Day start yet, getting it just two years after he went number one. That beat Mike Moore (1981 daft; 1984 Opening Day) and Stephen Strasburg (2009 draft; 2012 Opening Day).

The bad news: Skenes had a respectable outing on Thursday, only two earned runs against him, but the Marlins managed to turn a 4-1 deficit into a 5-4 win when their left fielder Kyle Stowers walked it off with an RBI single in the bottom of the ninth.

I Can Get Started Dept.: Spencer Torkelson Display—My baseball analysis/historical crush Jessica Brand informs that Spencer Torkelson, Tiger extraordinaire, is the first since 1901 to draw four walks and hit one out in his team’s first regular season game.

Fallen Angels Dept.—Things aren’t bad enough with the Angels as they are? They not only had to lose on Opening Day to last year’s major league worst, and in the White Sox’s playpen. They needed infielder Nicky Lopez to take the mound in the eighth to land the final out of the inning—after the White Sox dropped a five spot Ryan Johnson in his Angels debut. Lopez walked White Sox catcher Korey Lee but got shortstop Jacob Amaya to fly out for the side.

Jessica Brand also reminded one and all that the last time any team reached for a position player to pitch when behind on Opening Day was in 2017, when the Padres called upon Christian Bethancourt with the Dodgers blowing them out.

South Side Reality Checks Cashed Dept.—The White Sox didn’t exactly fill Rate Field on Thursday. (I’m sure I’m not the only one noticing the Freudian side of “Guaranteed” removed from the name.) But those who did attend weren’t going to let little things like a 121-loss 2024 or nothing much done to improve the team this winter stop them.

“It’s delusion that feeds me,” said a fan named JeanneMarie Mandley to The Athletic‘s Sam Blum. “I don’t care . . . I know we suck. I’m not stupid.”

We’re guessing that a hearty enough share of White Sox fans think Opening Day’s 8-1 win over the Angels was a) an aberration; b) a magic trick; c) a figment of their imaginations; or, d) all the above.

Well, That Took Long Enough Dept.—What do Mickey Cochrane, Gabby Hartnett, Ernie Lombardi, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Johnny Bench, Carlton Fisk, Gary Carter, Ted Simmons, and Ivan Rodriguez have in common other than Hall of Fame plaques?

The answer: They never hit leadoff homers on Opening Day in their major league lives. But Yankee catcher Austin Wells did it, this year, on Thursday, sending a 2-0 service from Brewers starter Freddy Peralta into the right field seats to open the way to a 4-2 Yankee win.

“Why doesn’t it make sense?” asked Yankee manager Aaron Boone postgame. Then, he answered: “Other than he’s a catcher and he’s not fast, although actually he runs pretty well for a catcher . . . I think he’s gonna control the strike zone and get on base, too, and he’s very early in his career. I think when we look up, he’s gonna be an on-base guy that hits for some power.”

We’ll see soon enough, skipper.

Don’t Put a Lid On It Dept.—The umps admitted postgame that they missed completely a flagrant rules violation by Yankee center fielder Trent Grisham in the ninth Come to think of it, it seems both the Brewers and the Yankees missed it, even if Brewers fans didn’t.

With a man on, Devin Williams on the mound for the Yankees, and Isaac Collins at the plate for the Brewers, Collins ripped one into the right centerfield gap. Grisham ran it down, removed his hat, and used the hat to knock the ball down after it caromed off the fence, the better to keep the ball from going away from him.

With one and all missing the rules violation, it left Collins on second with a double and the Brewers with second and third—instead of Collins on third with a ground-rule triple and the run scoring. Had anyone seen Grisham’s move and demanded a review, it might have meant just that and, possibly, the Brewers winning the game in the end. Possibly.

Just Juan Game Dept.—Juan Soto’s regular-season Mets debut was respectable: 1-for-3 with two walks and one strikeout. But he didn’t get to score or drive home a run. The Mets, who still have baseball’s best Opening Day winning percentage, lost to the Astros, 3-1, in Houston.

The only serious problem with Soto’s punchout was Astros closer Josh Hader doing it to him with two on in the ninth. Now, try to remember this about that ninth:

* The Mets entered trailing 3-0.
* Hader surrendered two singles and a bases-loading walk to open.
* Then, he surrendered a sacrifice fly by Francisco Lindor to spoil the shutout.
* Hader fell in the hole 3-0 to Soto first.
* Then, he got Soto to look at a strike, foul one off, then swing and miss on a low slider.

That’s how Hader earned an Opening Day save and a 9.00 season-opening ERA. That’s further evidence—and, from the Craig Kimbrel School of Saviourship, of course—that the save is one of the least useful statistics in baseball.

Or: That kind of save is like handing the keys to the city to the arsonist who set the fire from which he rescued all the occupants in the first place.

Blind Justice Dept.—Umpire Auditor reports that Opening Day umpires blew 186 calls. That would average out to about 2.6 blown calls per umpire, I think. Just saying.

Just Wrong Dept.—Is it me, or—aside from the pleasure of only one true blowout (the Orioles flattening the Jays by a ten-run margin)—were there four interleague games on Opening Day?

That’s just plain wrong. It may be an exercise in futility to argue against regular-season interleague play anymore. But the least baseball’s government can do it draw up and enforce a mandate that no interleague games shall be scheduled for Opening Day again. Ever.

2024: Taking the Fifth, and Other Lamentations

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Aaron Judge

This is not what was meant when the phrase, “I’ve got the drop on you,” was coined . . .

Hands up to everyone who can’t wait for 2024 to depart. Now, hands up to everyone who thinks 2024 was just the most wonderful year of the decade. My, but that’s a barren sea of hands over that second suggestion.

Much like its home country, baseball’s 2024 was . . . well, why don’t we let some of the signature moments, doings, and undoings of baseball’s year speak for themselves. The new flimsy uniforms sucked. The All-Star Game uniforms didn’t suck that badly, but still. Meanwhile, I’m thankful to folks such as Jayson Stark and a few other intrepid sleuths of BBW—that’s Baseball Bizarro World, you perverts—who either unearthed or reminded us about . . .

Take the Fifth—Please Dept.—“Come an’ see my amazin’ Mets,” their manager Casey (I Lost With This Team What I Used to Win with the Yankees) Stengel liked to say of his maiden squad. “I been in this game a hundred years but I see new ways to lose I never knew were invented yet.”

That was the Ol’ Perfesser gazing down from the Elysian Fields, watching the team with whom he won ten pennants and seven World Series perform the single most splendid imitation of the 1962 Mets since . . . the 2024 White Sox finished their sad, sad, sad regular season.

Pace George F. Will, look to your non-laurels, White Sox—the Bronx Bumblers captured 21st Century baseball’s booby prize. You White Sox only out-lost the 1962 Mets this season. You probably never did in one regular season game what only began in a World Series game . . . with a Yankee center fielder who does a credible impersonation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa approaching the plate and Frank Howard at the plate committing his first error playing center field after 538 fly balls hit his way in his entire career to date became outs.

Then . . .

* A Gold Glove-finalist shortstop threw for a force play at third base and saw the ball ricochet off the base instead of reach his third baseman’s glove.

* The arguable best pitcher in the American League got thatclose to escaping a bases-loaded, nobody-out jam when he suffered the brain fart heard ’round the Bronx and the world: he forgot to cover first when Mookie Betts hit a screwdriving ball toward Anthony Rizzo. Oops.

* The Yankee anti-party included a balk and catcher’s interference.

* The Dodgers became the only team in baseball history to score five runs in a World Series game after they were in the hole 5-0.

* The Yankees became the only team in baseball history to serve up five unearned runs in a World Series game since they started counting earned and unearned runs as official statistics. (When did they start? In the same year during which premiered Ford’s moving assembly line, the first newspaper crossword puzzle (in the New York World), and Louis Armstrong’s first cornet. In the New Orleans Home for Coloured Waifs.)

* And the fifth-inning party actually started with everyone from the television announcers to the fans and back pondering whether Gerrit Cole might, maybe, consummate a no-hitter to keep the Yankees alive.

Your Reality Check Bounced Dept.—Too many Yankee fans continue infesting social media with proclamations that the Yankees still have the dynastic history of dynastic histories. And too many baseball fans steeped in reality and not fantasy keep reminding them, Your damn dynasty is just soooooo 20th Century!

Juan Not-So-Small Step for Met World—That’s $765 million the Mets will pay Juan Soto over the next fifteen years. This may or may not mean the end of Pete Alonso’s days as a Met, which may or may not mean . . .

Out with a Bang Dept. . . . that Polar Bear Pete’s final act as a bona-fide Met was the biggest blow on their behalf this century: the three-run homer he blasted in the ninth inning that proved the game, set, and National League division series winner against the Brewers. Which was also the only home run hit by any Met in the set.

Did I Do That Dept.—Alonso’s division series-winning blast came off Devin Williams . . . who’d never allowed a ninth-inning lead-changing bomb in his major leaguer life until then. Then, after some time passed, the Brewers let the Yankees talk them out of keeping Williams, sending them pitcher Nestor Cortes, infielder Caleb Durbin, and cash to take Williams. We still don’t know if the deal was Milwaukee payback for surrendering Alonso’s game-changing/game-swiping bomb.

Out with a Bigger Bang Dept.—That would be Walker Buehler, pitcher. One minute, locking down the Dodgers’ World Series win with a spotless Game Five ninth including two swinging strikeouts. The next, practically (well, give or take a few hours): Signing for one year and $21 million with the Red Sox. Anyone remember the Dodgers making Buehler a qualifying offer for that money and Buehler turning it down? He’s rolling serious dice on himself with this deal.

Shohei-hei Rock and Roll Dept.—You might think anyone can become a member of the 50 home run/50 stolen base club. But you won’t be able to predict who might do it the same way Shohei Ohtani did in September against the Marlins: 6-for-6 at the plate; three home runs; five extra base hits; two stolen bases; ten runs batted in. His own planet? Try realising Ohtani exists in his own quadrant.

A Cut Below Dept.—Pete Fairbanks, Rays reliever. He missed a game in 2024 because of a finger cut. He cut the finger opening a bottle of spring water. Considering his bizarre 2023 injury (incurring a black eye while trying to dunk against his toddler son through a water basketball net), it seems as though Fairbanks just couldn’t cut it anymore.

On Your Knee Dept.—Presented for your consideration: Miguel Sanó, Angel. Aleady on the injured list with an inflamed knee. He put a heating pad over it. He forgot about it just enough to burn the knee and place himself for another month on the IL. Miguel Sanó, who proved he certainly could stand the heat in . . . the Angels’ continuing Twilight Zone.

The King of Pop Dept.—Mookie Betts performs amazing feats at the plate and on the field. At the plate, they usually involve baseballs shot on lines into the outfield, or driven like ballistic missiles over fences. They didn’t involve him popping out for the cycle . . . until 25 September, when, in order, he popped out to: second baseman, third baseman, first baseman, and shortstop.

Don’t do it. Don’t Google “MLB players who’ve popped out for the cycle.” It won’t even call up the Mookie Monster, yet, never mind anyone else who might have had that kind of a day—whether a Hall of Famer, a Hall of Famer in the making, or a guy who’s destined to be forgotten outside such a single singular feat.

“I’m the one probably most surprised . . . “

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Shohei Ohtani

Ohtani takes one of his curtain calls from the Miami audience Thursday evening.

If you absolutely must become baseball’s first 50/50 man, as in 50+ home runs and 50+ stolen bases in a single season, you couldn’t pay for any more earth-moving way to do it than Shohei Ohtani found Thursday evening.

A 6-for-6 day at the plate. As many runs batted in in one game as his Dodgers teammate Freddie Freeman has so far in all September. Three RBI hits serving as just the overture to both Ohtani’s history-making suite and the Dodgers smothering the hapless Marlins, 20-4, in the Fish’s own tank.

Theft number 50 after a first-inning double and theft number 51 after the second-inning RBI single. A two-run double in the third ruined only by Ohtani getting himself thrown out trying to stretch it into a triple.

Almost exactly the way Hall of Famer in waiting Albert Pujols demolished the Rangers after the sixth inning in Game Three of the 2011 World Series (three bombs: one each in the seventh, eighth, and ninth innings), Ohtani’s real mayhem began in the sixth:

A man on second and one out in the sixth, Ohtani sent an 0-1 slider into the second deck behind right center field. It made him only the second Dodger behind Shawn Green to hit 49 in a season. Second and third off a wild pitch and two out in the seventh, Ohtani hit one the opposite way into the left field bullpen. That founded the 50/50 Club and earned him a loud curtain call in a road ballpark.

First and second and two out in the ninth, Ohtani slammed the best possible exclamation point upon the proceedings when he drove a high meatball from a sacrificial lamb (read: Marlins position player, Vidal Bruján) well into the upper deck behind right field. With another curtain call to follow.

“To be honest,” Ohtani told a television interviewer through an interpreter post-game, “I’m the one probably most surprised. I have no idea where this came from, but I’m glad that I performed well today.”

The loanDepot Park audience in Miami didn’t have much to root for from their own lack of heroes this year (the Marlins have already been eliminated from the postseason mathematically), so it didn’t cost them anything but netted them plenty of respect to hand history their day’s loudest ovations.

If you’re my age, you can compare it to the day the usually unapologetic rooters of the early Mets suddenly turned on their anti-heroes on that fine 1964 Father’s Day in Shea Stadium, when Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Bunning threatened to pitch the first perfect game in the 20th Century National League. When Bunning finished what he started, he was hit with a wild standing O and an invitation to appear on The Ed Sullivan Show.

Credit Marlins manager Skip Schumaker, whose ten-year major league playing career included one season (2013) with the Dodgers, for looking into the teeth of the hurricane demolishing his club, with Ohtani potentially carrying number 50 in his bat, seeing second and third and two outs in the seventh, electing not to put Ohtani aboard to give the Fish a better survival chance with aging Kevin Kiermaier—whose bat is now as useless as his glovework remains a study—due to hit behind him.

“If it was a tight game, one run lead or we’re down one,” the manager said postgame, “I probably put him on. Down that many runs [nine], that’s a bad move baseball-wise, karma-wise, baseball god-wise. You go after him to see if you can get him out. I think out of respect for the game, we were going to go after him. He hit the home run. That’s just part of the deal.”

“A lot of us actually looked at the opposing dugout and I think a lot of the coaches were telling Skip, ‘Hey, we should walk him right here’,” said Dodger third baseman Max Muncy, who’d scored on Ohtani’s early single and final home run. “I’ve always loved Skip. When he was the first base coach in San Diego, I always talked to him. I heard all guys love to play for him. For him to do that, that’s awesome.”

“The game was certainly out of hand,” said Dodger manager Dave Roberts. “Guys got their starters out and then to take that potential moment away from the fans, Shohei himself, Skip understood that. It was bigger than that and I’ve got nothing for respect for that.”

Kiermaier striking out to end that seventh merely amplified the magnanimity of what Schumaker refused to do. A team out of any pennant race has a lot more for which to apologise to their fans than trying to stop the unstoppable force on a night he’s making history on its dollars. And leading his team to a National League West division clinch while he’s at it.

Ohtani previously entered the rareified 40/40 club by hitting a grand slam. This was different. This was a night the Dodgers used the Marlins for target practise and Ohtani proved to have the most ammunition to expend. Even MLB officials were in on the act, swapping out regulation game baseballs for pre-authenticated balls before Ohtani batted in the seventh.

When he turned Mike Baumann’s curve ball into history, those officials scurried to siphon as much memorabilia as they could carry away from Ohtani, perhaps leaving observers to ask only how they’d managed to miss his uniform belt, undershirt, and jock strap.

It isn’t every day that a player has a ten-RBI, six-hits, five extra-base hits, three home runs, two stolen bases day. No player had done all of those over a career, according to OptaSTATS. Not Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig, not Ted Williams or Stan Musial, not Mickey Mantle or Willie Mays, not Henry Aaron or Roberto Clemente, not Dick Allen or Mike Schmidt, not Barry Bonds or Ken Griffey, Jr.

Ohtani did all five in a single day.

“With this game of baseball, it was a win for Major League Baseball,” said Roberts. “I know people all over the globe were watching this game and we’re excited to see that they got a chance to witness history.”

Roberts and Schumaker understood what too many forget, including among those who administer the game, but which longtime New York Times baseball writer George Vecsey got, watching then-commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti getting it, too, when Giamatti almost gave in and pumped his fist watching Hall of Fame pitcher Nolan Ryan ring up his 5,000th lifetime strikeout at Hall of Fame outfielder/base larcenist Rickey Henderson’s expense: “baseball is about rooting, about caring.”

Nowhere was that more evident than when Ohtani popped out of the visitors’ dugout to take one of a couple of curtain calls after his blasts. A young fan on the other side of the side rail, holding a sign up just above the rail, but level with Ohtani’s face:

I SKIPPED MATH
TO WATCH
HISTORY.
OHTANI 50/50.

If I’m that boy’s English teacher, I give extra credit for the school-age pun of the season.

ASG: As (almost) usual, show biz yields to baseball

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Jarren Duran

Red Sox center fielder Jarren Duran hoists the clear bat awarded the All-Star Game’s Most Valuable Player. His tiebreaking two-run homer held up to give the AL the 5-3 win.

God help us all, everyone. The All-Star break began with a pre-Home Run Derby singing of “The Star Spangled Banner” Monday night (by country star Ingrid Andress) that made youth cringe and elders think wistful thoughts of Roseanne Barr. It ended with a tenth American League All-Star Game win in eleven seasons.

In between, of course, was much to ponder and much to dismiss as patent nonsense, which seems to be far more the norm than Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward, who initiated the game in 1933, might have imagined.

Phillies third baseman Alec Bohm could be seen having to labour to keep from laughing (presumably, that he might not weep—or wish to commit manslaughter) when Andress tackled “The Star Spangled Banner” as though too well besotted. It turned out that appearance was everything: She copped the following day to being drunk and having enough issue with it to seek rehab and recovery.

Wish her well, but demand to know why nobody in baseball’s administration noticed she was drunk as she took the mike in the first place.

That was then: The Derby rules were, a participant had ten outs to hit as many homers as they could, the hitter with the most such bombs advanced, and that was that. So simple that, in fact, even Mark Belanger (human Electrolux at shortstop, but a spaghetti bat who hit three fewer homers in eighteen major league seasons than the late Hall of Famer Willie Mays hit in the first half of 1965) could have done it.

This is now: Round One—three minutes or forty batted balls, whichever came first, followed by an old-style three outs to hit as many bombs as possible. Round Two—the top four floggers moved to a bracket-like semifinal. Round Three—the two semifinal winners head to head. The net result: Teoscar Hernandez (Dodgers) defeating Bobby Witt, Jr. (Royals), who nearly forced a playoff with a ICBM-like blast stopped only by the left center field fence.

Some of us still wonder why we’re supposed to tolerate three-hour long Home Run Derbies but arise armed against two and a half hour-plus real baseball games. Or, why we had three-minute commercials aboard Fox’s All-Star Game telecast Tuesday before seeing supersonic relief pitchers blowing the side away in order in a minute and a half if that long.

Perhaps commissioner Rob Manfred might have an answer to that one. At least he has a sort-of answer to the question (posed by The Athletic‘s Tyler Kepner) of when the ever-more-hideous generic All-Star Game uniforms of the past several years will be disappeared in favour of returning the fine old tradition of All-Stars wearing their own uniforms and thus representing their teams.

“I am aware of the sentiment and I do know why people kind of like that tradition,” Commissioner Pepperwinkle told Kepner. “There will be conversations about that.” The proper two-word answer to that, of course, is, prove it. About knowing why people (more than kind of) like that tradition and holding serious conversations about it.

Well, take the proverbial pause for the proverbial cause. That very first All-Star Game featured the American League representatives wearing their own teams’ home uniforms with the National League wearing road threads, as modeled below by Hall of Fame catcher Gabby Hartnett:

Gabby Hartnett

Behold now this year’s threads for each league:

Yes, we have seen far worse for generic All-Star uniforms.

Except for each league’s colour scheme, is it really that radically different from the 1933 NL haberdashery? Now, this year’s threads would look far nicer if the American League jersey was done with red-on-white (the AL was the home team in Globe Life Field) and the National League was done with blue-on-gray (since the NL is the visiting team). And worn over either white (home) or gray (road) pants.

My normal position is to be all-in on returning to the practise of each league’s All-Stars wearing their own teams’ uniforms, representing their teams and fan bases, as their forebears did for so many decades. If Commissioner Pepperwinkle insists ultimately upon keeping generic league uniforms, this year’s style just might be the right way to go, switching the core white and gray each year depending upon which league is the All-Star host.

The wherefores of this year’s uniforms mattered less when the game got underway, and rookie NL starting pitcher Paul Skenes (Pirates) got to face Aaron Judge (Yankees) after all, thanks to Judge’s teammate Juan Soto wringing himself into a walk. The bad news: Judge forcing Soto at second with a grounder to third for the side.

AL manager Bruce Bochy (Rangers) was well aware of the marquee appeal of Skenes versus Judge while penciling Judge into his cleanup slot. But he sent three lefthanded swingers with impeccable on-base credentials up against the righthanded Pirate phenom to open, hoping precisely to get that marquee match without sacrificing his best chances to start winning the game.

Joe and Jane Fan insist, “This is just an exhibition, dammit!” Maybe they’re right. Maybe the metastasis of regular-season interleague play to a full-season thing has left the All-Star Game bereft of meaning, as opposed to such artifices as the period when postseason home field advantage went to the league who won the Game..

But maybe a Hall of Famer in waiting who’s won four World Series as a skipper knows, however the game’s been kicked around like a commissioner’s plaything for too damn long, that himself, his NL counterpart Torey Lovullo (Diamondbacks), and the players on both sides, actually do play this particular game as baseball, not show business.

Shohei Ohtani

Shohei Ohtani detonating a three-run homer in the third inning. “To be able to share a dugout with him was surreal.”—Pirates pitcher Paul Skenes. Ohtani is now the only player in Show history to earn a pitching win in one All-Star Game and a home run in another All-Star Game.

So Bochy got Joe and Jane Fan their marquee matchup the old fashioned way, and Skenes came out of it on top, but Bochy’s diligence left him the only manager in major league history to win a World Series and an All-Star Game in each league. And, the first since Hall of Famer Joe McCarthy to manage an All-Star Game at home the season after he won a World Series.

Putting baseball ahead of show biz has enriching payoffs, of which Commissioner Pepperwinkle seemed as unaware as both managers were reminded soon enough en route the American League’s 5-3 win Tuesday.

Lovullo got the first such reminder when Shohei Ohtani (Dodgers) faced Tanner Houck (Red Sox) in the top of the third with nobody out, two men on, and sent a 2-0 splitter a few rows back into the right center field seats. (The last Dodger to hit one out in All-Star competition? Hall of Famer Mike Piazza, 28 years earlier.) Bochy got his in the bottom of that inning, when Soto shot a two-run double to center and David Fry (Guardians) singled him home to tie the game at three after another Judge ground out.

Two innings later, Lovullo got the reminder that ended up counting for the game, when Jarren Duran (Red Sox) batted with two out and one on, took a strike from Hunter Greene (Reds), then caught hold of a Greene splitter and sent his own message into the same region of seats where Ohtani’s blast landed.

“It won’t hit me until I try to go to sleep tonight,” Duran told The Athletic postgame. “Who knows if I’ll be able to sleep tonight.”

A guy in his fourth Show season who entered this All-Star Game leading it with ten triples and the AL with 27 doubles, then detonated what proved the winning bomb Tuesday, deserves to sleep the sleep of the just. So does the rookie whose first two months in Show have made him a name and an arm to reckon with as it was, without giving him the additional gift of being an Ohtani teammate even for just one game—thus far.

“I tried to enjoy the three hours I had on a team with him,” Skenes said postgame, “because that’s probably only going to happen once a year. It was really cool to watch him do that, really cool to watch him go about his business and get to meet him and all that. You know, he’s—I don’t know of any hitters I’ve faced that’s better than him in my career. So, to be able to share a dugout with him was surreal.”

The only thing better for either would have been an NL win, of course. Nobody had to tell Skenes it was neither his nor Ohtani’s fault the NL came up two bucks short Tuesday.

An ESPN writer gets religion . . .

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Shohei Ohtani

Hitting the first of his thirteen Dodger home runs to date, Ohtani’s overall plate value may force the Dodgers to think of him as a one-way player—at the plate, exclusively. May. And one ESPN writer thinks it’s not a terrible thought at all.

Some of us have dared to ponder long enough whether Shohei Ohtani’s two-way viability was all that viable in the long term. Well, now. At least one ESPN writer asks and answers the same question. Sort of.

“Like [Babe] Ruth in the late 1910s, Othani might be getting so good with the bat it no longer makes sense to deal with the complications of a two-way act,” writes Bradford Doolittle.

Would Ohtani be open to giving up pitching at some point if the Dodgers ask? It’s the 21st-century version of the Babe Ruth Problem that confronted the Red Sox long ago. But if the team ever does make that request, it will be because a franchise that employs a small army of analysts has untangled some very complicated math around the decision.

Thanks to his recovery from a second Tommy John surgery performed late last year, Ohtani on the mound is a non-starter this year. Ohtani purely at the plate, as the Dodgers’ designated hitter, is something else entirely. Emphasis on something else: As of this morning, he leads the entire Show with a .646 slugging percentage, a 1.069 OPS (his on-base percentage is a solid gold .425), and 128 total bases. He also leads the National League with his 200 OPS+.

Shall we look at Ohtani’s 2024 thus far according to my Real Batting Average (RBA) metric? (Total bases + walks + intentional walks + sacrifice flies + hit by pitches, divided by total plate appearances. P.S. Ohtani as of this morning led the entire Show with his .356 traditional batting average and his 69 hits, too.)

2024 through 5/22 PA TB BB IBB SF HBP RBA
Shohei Ohtani 226 128 24 0 2 1 .686

WARriors may care to note that Ohtani’s 3.2 through this morning is behind only his Dodgers teammate Mookie Betts and a shade ahead of the Cubs’ import pitching star Shota Imanaga’s 3.0. (Imanaga is knocking the league on its can on the mound: he leads the NL with a 2.21 fielding-independent pitching rate [FIP] and leads the entire Show with an absolutely extraterrestrial 497 ERA+ so far this year, not to mention his 0.84 ERA.)

Doolittle runs down the prospects of Ohtani coming off the mound to stay and reasons why the Dodgers might want to make the move: his sick seasonal stats to date, his improved overall batting metrics, his increase in line drive hitting, even career high baserunning figures.

But it takes Doolittle a good while before he notes the injury that keeps Ohtani at the plate alone this year. And he almost brushes it to one side in order to address what he calls “the biggest consideration of all.” That would be, as he sees it:

To what extent is Ohtani’s current leap at the plate a byproduct of not having to worry about pitching? And how much better might he be doing, if that were at all possible, if he didn’t have to worry about rehabbing another pitching injury? Could his baserunning value be maintained or enhanced if he didn’t have to consider mound work?

A lot of people, myself included, wondered just how viable Ohtani’s two-way baseball life would prove in the long term. Enough of us who did so nearly had our heads handed to us. Three years ago, it happened to Ahead of the Curve author Brian Kenny, co-hosting MLB Now (MLB Network), courtesy of New York Post writer Joel Sherman, who co-hosted that day.

Kenny suggested the Angels should think of limiting Ohtani to one or the other full-time role, pitcher or designated hitter/occasional outfielder. Sherman demanded to know why. Kenny replied, “One could damage the other.” Oops. “So,” Sherman rejoined, “you would like one of the fifteen to twenty best starting pitchers in baseball to stop starting because you’re worried about something that could happen?”

Well, something that could have happened, did happen.

It’s kept Ohtani off the mound since last August, but that’s all, folks. That’s not wonderful news for the rest of the league’s pitchers, but it’s certainly wonderful news for a Dodger team sitting seven games up in the National League West while leading the entire Show in team total bases and team OPS and the NL in home runs, team slugging, and team batting bases on balls.

Once upon a time, Babe Ruth himself, the only other man to play even one season (1919) as both a starting pitcher and full-time (130 games) slugger/outfielder, thought the idea of continuing in that tandem role wasn’t too realistic even for him.

“I don’t think a man can pitch in his regular turn, and play every other game at some other position, and keep that pace year after year,” said Ruth in 1918, when he started twenty games for the Red Sox and played part-time (95 games) as a slugging outfielder. “I can do it this season all right, and not feel it, for I am young and strong and don’t mind the work. But I wouldn’t guarantee to do it for many seasons.”

Ruth had to be dragged kicking and screaming somewhat into the idea that his number-one value was and would be at the plate. But once he joined the Yankees he never again tried to be a pitcher, except for five games spread between 1920-21, 1930, and 1933. From 1920 through 1934, of course, you could say (with apologies to Casey Stengel) that Ruth was rather splendid in his line of full-time outfield work. Even if he was far more valuable at the plate (transdimensional in his time) than in the outfield (roughly league average).

It wouldn’t be untoward if the Dodgers began to think Ohtani might want to ponder Ruth’s 1918 remarks and take them seriously for the sake of his longer term baseball health. He already proved he could do the two-way job at a breathtaking level, not to mention doing it that way longer than Ruth actually did.

If the Dodgers are worried about the box office, they shouldn’t. Ohtani at the plate is still more than enough gate attraction. He’s liable to stay that way for a good number of years further. One way to ensure that as well as his real value in a pennant race just might be to keep him off the mound from now on.