Shohei Ohtani – Dugout Tales

The San Francisco Giants for the second year in a row selected a two-way player in the first round of the 2023 Major League Draft when they chose Bryce Eldridge with the 16^th overall pick. While we don’t know how long he will be a two-way player as a professional it is intriguing that the Giants followed up last year’s first round pick Reggie Crawford, also a two-way player, with another two-way player. Do the Giants hope to strike lightning and find their own Shohei Ohtani? Speaking of Ohtani, is this a sign that they have no real plans in pursuing him in free agency? Or is this Farhan Zaidi being smart and frugal by basically getting two players with one draft pick? Will this be the new trend? Many baseball players who get drafted are “two-way” players at the amateur level but are usually selected as one or the other once they turn pro. The first two-way threat that I can recall in recent history who played two-ways as a professional is Brendan McKay who the Tampa Bay Rays selected fourth overall in the 2017 Draft. Hunter Greene selected second overall by the Cincinnati Reds was also a considerable threat but was drafted as a pitcher and has been a dominant arm who quickly rose through the Minor Leagues and making the 2022 Opening Day roster for Cincinnati.

McKay has become an interesting career to follow. He won the John Olerud Two-Way Player of the Year Award all three years he played at the University of Louisville, and added the Golden Spikes and the Dick Howser Awards his junior year as well. Projected to go number one or two in the draft overall, McKay slipped to number four. McKay’s hitting has been less than stellar throughout his professional career, but his pitching has been great which led the Rays eventually to converting him to a full-time pitcher by 2022 with his 94mph fastball, a nice curve, and a sinking changeup.

McKay made his Major League debut in 2019 and split time between the big club and Triple-A Durham. He would get Covid early on in 2020 and then shut down shortly after his return due to shoulder tightness. McKay returned in 2021 starting only seven games before having surgery for thoracic outlet syndrome and then Tommy John in 2022. The Rays would release McKay after the 2022 season, only to resign him to a Minor League contract but he is out at least until some time in 2024 for his age 28 season, he still could have a lot to offer.

McKay is just one player, the first real project at the professional level from the amateur rankings here in the U.S. Ohtani and his greatness as both a hitter and pitcher is the obvious outlier, and Bryce could be the next success story. Bryce is a 6’7” 223-pound pitcher and first baseman from James Madison High School in Virginia. Bryce was considered the top two-way player of the 2023 draft class, and having been named Virginia’s Gatorade Player of the Year, after putting up some amazing numbers. On the mound he had a 1.06 ERA with 66 strikeouts in only 39.2 innings with his 96mph fastball and his above average grade slider. Bryce also had great numbers at the plate where he batted .422 with a .649 on base percentage, and eight home runs. Bryce’s size gives him considerable raw power from the left side, and with a short swing compared to most others his size he also makes solid contact at the plate. It will be interesting to see what the Giants decide to do with him and his performance on the mound and at the plate will ultimately be the deciding factor. This year’s Olerud Award winner Caden Grice of Clemson was selected 64^th overall by the Diamondbacks, and while no one can project what any of these players future holds, it sure is fun to watch a player exceed at the professional level as a two-way player. UPDATE: The Arizona Diamondbacks announced that Grice will focus only on pitching.

Following up on my previous post, the River Cats did pretty good against the Aces in their series leading up to the 4^th of July as they split the series 3-3. My biggest take away from that series about Reno isn’t that they aren’t an unbeatable team, it was just that they play very good fundamental baseball. No one on the team is really going to wow you, but they’re all just very good players who work hard and get the job done. Blaze Alexander, shortstop for the Aces, started the series going 2-14 before breaking out in the final game where he went 2-4 with a homerun. To say he was excited is an understatement. Kudos to Dominic Canzone as well who was called up to the Show for the Diamondbacks on July 7^th.

The River Cats travel to Salt Lake for the 4^th of July and would split the series 3-3 before going into the All Star break this week. They close out their first two second half series with a 6-6 record which puts them tied for fourth in the Pacific Coast League and only three games behind league leading Albuquerque who sit atop with a 9-3 record. The River Cats will take on Albuquerque for the first time this season July 25-30 in Albuquerque before they face off in Sacramento on August 29-September 3.

After the break, the Oklahoma City Dodgers will make a visit to Sutter Health Park in Sacramento for a three-game series starting on July 14th, followed up by six games against the Tacoma Rainiers before the River Cats go back on the road.

In other news, Heliot Ramos who is on a rehab assignment with the River Cats was named Pacific Coast League Player of the Week where he batted .483, with a 1.103 Slugging Percentage, 1.603 OPS, with 14 hits, nine of which were for extra bases, including four home runs, and 10 RBI.

The 2023 World Baseball Classic came to an end on Tuesday night with a matchup between Team USA and Samurai Japan with an ending that was so perfect the games almost seemed scripted. Two outs, and down by one in the bottom of the ninth, Team USA’s Mike Trout came to bat to face his real-life teammate Shohei Ohtani in a show down that garnered 6.5 million viewers in the U.S. alone, and roughly 67% of the televisions in Japan were watching the game.

I’ve always been a fan of international sports such as the Olympics and soccer’s World Cup, so when the World Baseball Classic was introduced in 2006 because baseball was dropped from the Olympic games I was all in. While I did watch some of the games from 2006, 2009, and 2013, it wasn’t until the 2017 games that really hooked me and had me watching baseball from Japan or Korea at 3:00 a.m.

Ohtani was unable to play in the 2017 Classic due to an injury to his ankle. He was already a superstar in Japan, and this was to be his introduction to the world. Baseball fans knew about the second coming of Babe Ruth, and it was a major blow not only for the Japanese team, but also for those waiting to see what the hype was all about. Japan would reach the semi-finals in 2017 and their opponents were none other than Team USA. There was no Mike Trout, Mookie Betts, Trea Turner, or Kyle Schwarber, as a matter of fact only Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt are hold overs from that 2017 team, and they both had not so stellar performances that year. Team USA was the underdog as they prepared to take on Japan on an overcast and rainy night at Dodgers Stadium.

I had only purchased tickets for the Championship game in 2017 because I wanted to be there. I had no clue which teams would be in it, it was just a matter of being at the Championship for a historical event, and little did I know how historical it would be. Somewhere along I-5 south, we stopped at a rest area where I saw another fellow traveler and asked if he was going to the game. He said he was going to that night’s semi-final only between the U.S. and Japan. We spoke for a few a minutes and then went our separate ways. While our journey continued, I decided to check to see if there happened to be any tickets left for that night’s game and there was, so I was able to pick some up for the nose bleeds along the right field line.

When we got to L.A. our AirBnb was only about a mile and half from Dodgers Stadium so we decided to walk. I’m a huge Dodgers fan, and this would be my first trip to Dodgers Stadium so I was doubly excited to be going. The first thing I did was buy a Dodger Dog and drink. Sadly, the Dodger Dog was very underwhelming. It was a cold and grey sky as we took our seats but luckily, they were covered as a night steady rain came would come down throughout the night. The crowd buzzed when it was announced that the first pitch would be thrown out by both legendary Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, and Dodgers’ hero, Japan’s own Hideo Nomo.

Japan’s Tomoyuki Sugano, who tied with teammate Kodai Senga with 16 strikeouts to lead the 2017 tournament, started for the Japan and made quick work of the U.S. team through the first three innings only allowing a single to Buster Posey in the top of the third.

The U.S. would draw blood first in the top of the fourth when Christian Yelich reached second on an error and scored off a base hit by Andrew McCutchen. The Samurai would tie the game up when second baseman Ryosuke Kikuchi would hit a homerun off reliever Nate Jones who had come in after Tanner Roark had pitched four amazing shutout innings for Team USA. The homerun was a punch in the gut for Team USA and their fans as Kikuchi wasn’t even the biggest threat in Japan’s lineup, but then in the eighth Team USA scrapped its way back. Brandon Crawford singled with one out, followed by a double by Ian Kinsler to move Crawford to third which brough up Adam Jones. The rain continued to come down steadily and the playing conditions were getting worse when Jones took the first offering from Kodai Senga and chopped it to the third baseman Nobuyuki Matsuda who slipped on the grass and couldn’t handle the ball cleanly which allowed Crawford to score and giving Team USA a lead, they would not let go.

So, as we went into the 2023 matchup, where once again Team USA would face Japan, I was hoping that lightning would strike twice. In 2017 not only did they beat Japan in the semi-finals, but they easily routed an undefeated Team Puerto Rico by a score of 8-0 in the championship. This time Japan was their opponent in the championship, but also undefeated.

I was excited to see Team USA take the early lead off Trea Turner’s third home run in as many games, but that lead was quickly erased in the bottom half of the second inning when Japan’s superstar Munetaka Murakami took the first pitch he saw from Merrill Kelly and deposited it 432 feet into the right field stands. That’s when the sinking feeling began for me. Pepper shaking Lars Nootbaar would drive in Kazuma Okamoto after two, and two innings later Okamoto would hit a home run that make the score 3-1. The only real highlight left for Team USA was a ten pitch at bat by Kyle Schwarber in the eighth that ended with a solo home run and Team USA getting to within one, and a guarantee that Mike Trout would have one more at bat in the ninth.

The at bat between Trout and Ohtani will go down in history as one of the most exciting moments in baseball as the two best players in the game today came head on with the best they had to offer. Ohtani would come out ahead striking out Trout on an 88.2 mph sweeping slider after having thrown four fastballs, the last of which hit 101.6 mph, to give Samurai Japan the World Baseball Classic title.

That Championship game didn’t end up how I wanted, heck, if it wasn’t for Mexico’s bullpen, I could have easily seen them being crowned the champions, but my heart was still in it for Team USA who were simply beat by a better team all around. I was surprised to see them make it as far as they did on the backs of those bats.

As exciting as that game was, and the memories from the entirety of the tournament had been, there is nothing like watching Ohtani play in real life. No matter how many times you watch him play on TV, that will never compare to seeing him play in real life, and if you can get inside the ballpark as soon as you can to truly enjoy the experience. The swarms of photographers who follow his every move, the legions of fans who shout out to him in hopes that he will just look in their direction and wave. If you’ve ever seen an old clip of how the fans reacted with The Beatles, that’s the only way I can describe the scene around Shohei Ohtani. I was fortunate enough to be at Ohtani’s Major League pitching debut against Oakland in 2018, and then again in 2022 I witnessed him hit career homerun number 101, but it was in the middle of the game as Ohtani returned to the dugout from the clubhouse where he brushed past and with that, I will never forget the day that I was touched by an Angel.

Tag: Shohei Ohtani

Expanding Horizons

Touched by an Angel