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As a pitcher, Ohtani’s splitter makes him particularly difficult to hit. Only one starter on the current major league roster, All-Star Kevin Gausman of the San Francisco Giants, throws this field more often than Ohtani, who uses it 18.6% of the time, according to Fangraphs. He throws aggressively with the divider, putting it on the same plane as his elite fastball.
“The splitter is the most important thing,” said Olson, who is 0 for 8 with five strikeouts against Ohtani. “He’s got the fastball in the upper 90s with a lot of riding, but to be able to have the splitter coming straight down from it and the driving playing, he’s halfway there and you have to decide which way he’s going.” . That combined with, it just has a smooth, fast movement.
As a hitter, Ohtani has so much power and swings so hard that he doesn’t have to hit a ball squarely to deal damage. It offers few safety zones for the launchers.
“If you look at his scatter plot in terms of hard hit bullets, he littered them top to bottom, top to bottom, bottom to bottom, bottom to bottom, speed to maybe more accentuated spots. by movement, “said Cole, who has faced Ohtani 12 times, allowing three hits and one walk. “It just forces you to adjust and perform at the same time, which is one of the hardest things to do.”
Olson doesn’t have to throw and Cole hits very rarely. As a two-way street player, Ohtani handles whatever challenges they describe – “He’s facing each other on both sides of the ball,” as Dodgers pitcher Walker Buehler put it – and in Denver he’ll do it all, plus the Home Run Derby.
A body and a mind can’t take that much, but Ohtani is a showman with a sense of duty.
“I expect to be quite tired and exhausted after these two days,” he said on Monday through an interpreter. “But there are a lot of people who want to watch it, and I want to make these guys happy, so that’s what I’m going to do.”
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