Quote:
Originally Posted by candybar
Opposing hitters are 0-24 with 15 strikeouts against just 2 walks when they face Ohtani third time through the batting order this season. That is absolutely bonkers - and there's no selection bias here since he's not yet been pulled due to ineffectiveness this season and if anything there's a bit of bias towards the top of the order here. Given this, looks like Ohtani's control woes are mostly due to having to get used to the pitch clock and the pitch-com (he's calling his own pitches through pitch-com this season). He's also pitching every six days, so his workload should end up being comparable to other aces this season. His stuff has been otherworldly and clearly improved since last year, so if his command goes back to the same level as last season, there's a reasonable chance he could end up with one of the best pitching seasons we've seen. As is, with pitch clock violations and control woes, Ohtani has a 0.64 ERA this season and leads the majors in pitching bWAR. He's also only given up 7 runs over his last 12 starts (73 IP) or so as well for 0.86 ERA.
Ohtani hasn't put up similar numbers at the plate but his statcast #s based on batted ball data are better than ever. His xwOBA is .409, which would be the best mark of his career (though I think hitting numbers are slightly up across the board this season). His career high in xwOBA was .408 in 2021 and his career high in wOBA was just .393 in 2021 as well. With a shift ban, there's no good reason for Ohtani to persistently underperform his xwOBA as he has so far this season (xwOBA of .409 vs wOBA of just .359).
All of this adds up to a potential GOAT season - not purely based on the difficulty and novelty of being a two-player, but an actual 13+ WAR type of season, if he stays healthy.
Let's take this statcast thing a bit further, since there's a lot of noise in early season data. Gerrit Cole, Zac Gallen, Luis Castillo, Ohtani and deGrom have been the top-5 pitchers in fWAR. This is their xBA and xSLG (expected batting average and slugging for opposing hitters based on statcast batted ball data and strikeouts):
Gerrit Cole: 214/317
Zac Gallen: 201/303
Luis Castillo: 210/299
Ohtani: 141/183
deGrom: 179/309
Ohtani is a huge outlier here even among the best starting pitchers.