Shohei Ohtani may prove to be baseball’s future, and what a future it could be

ANAHEIM, Calif. – While everyone else was rethinking the game, he was rethinking the player.

Shohei Ohtani’s season will end on an operating table. His team, the Los Angeles Angels, are, again, in October’s waiting room. They have over the past decade had enough bad coffee to have sated Manifest Destiny’s every wagon train, paced from here to there and back.

So, it all concludes in its usual mess: a few key players being swabbed in Betadine, Mike Trout brilliant and unrewarded, the starting rotation so thin you could see through it, ownership again seeking solutions. And this year, it would appear, there’ll be a change at manager, accounting for the last cockeyed deck chair.

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The inclination, then, would be to call this all a horrible failure. Another one. And, of course, that would be accurate, all considered. Except that Ohtani made it different. He proved in his swing, in his fastball, in his ability to take it in and sort it out and catch up – and yes, even in his blown elbow – that what he intended was possible. Is possible. Will be possible.

He reimagined the player in the world’s most rigorous league, reimagined it from the inside out, and did not fail. True, his body failed. That can be fixed. Rather, with a bit left in a season that fit his apparent preference for an understated entrance, Ohtani is finishing as the Angels’ regular cleanup hitter (behind Trout), as a strong Rookie of the Year candidate, as a likeable and gracious personality and teammate, as a 20-homer, 3.31-ERA, two-way beast who, at 23 (recently 24) years old, outperformed the hype, while underplaying the burden of a unique and taxing mission.

Bearing a fresh scar on the inside of his right elbow (presumably), Ohtani will return in spring as a full-time hitter and Tommy John surgery recoveree. Then, assuming the usual post-surgery progress and timetable, he will resume his life on both sides of the baseball in 2020, at 25 years old, only just entering his prime. It is the summer that could also be notable for being Trout’s last in Anaheim, and for being Albert Pujols’ age-40 season (and the ninth in a 10-year deal), and possibly for the Angels’ continuing effort to pull out of a decade-long organizational slump.

No need to jump ahead. What lingers from Ohtani is the ease from which 100-mph fastballs flew and 90-mph sliders darted. An early-season Sunday afternoon against the Oakland A’s in which big-league hitters were helpless. A late-May Sunday when he pitched to within an out of the ninth inning against the Tampa Bay Rays. The day he beat the Seattle Mariners in front of his boyhood hero, Ichiro. Then, of course, the two days – three months apart – when he left starts and afterward complained of elbow discomfort, the first of which threatened surgery, the second of which all but confirmed it.

What lingers are the mechanical alterations to his swing, made in the hours before his first major league game, a lifetime’s leg kick scrapped in time to ease amateur observations that this young man’s future was best served in a minor-league present. So he batted .341 in April. He homered in three consecutive starts in the first week of that month. He homered twice in the same August game in Cleveland. On the day he was informed his elbow ligament was shot, Ohtani nodded and hours later laced four hits, including two home runs, against the Texas Rangers.

He was at times vulnerable against lefties. He hit .203 in July. He also hit .362 in 82 plate appearances with runners in scoring position. Among all hitters with a minimum of 300 plate appearances, he ranked seventh in OPS, 10th in at-bats per home run, fourth in slugging percentage. He stole nine bases.

And, yeah, one shredded elbow, which happens. He arrived with murky MRIs on that elbow, and so some would maintain – given the velocity on his fastball and reliance on his splitter – that some number of pitches would finish that ligament. That number, turned out, was something just short of 853, not including spring training and between-starts bullpens, and in spite of the Angels’ attempts to both protect him and keep him fresh for his at-bats. He pitched, when healthy, once a week. He DH’d three or four times a week.

He was very good at all of it.

“Shohei’s got a chance to be a special, special player,” Angels manager Mike Scioscia said. “I don’t think it’s going to sit back on his first year because we didn’t see him pitch with the duration that he could’ve. If you give him the 23 starts, you’re going to get a feel for what this guy can do. So, it’s exciting to be part of the first go-round of Shohei here, but we didn’t see the complete player this year, unfortunately. I think that in 2020 you’ll get more of a closer representation – we got a taste of it – but you’ll get a closer representation of a guy who can go out there and start 20 to 24 games for you and get 350 plate appearances, whatever it might be, and be a dominant force. … I think he’s concentrating more on hitting now and you’re seeing some rewards from that. I think the true report card of Shohei is going to be over a length of time, when he can get out there and pitch again. Because he’s got a chance to be really, really special.

“Unfortunately, the health things cropped up. But what he did did not surprise us. Not at all. And he is a two-way player for a number of reasons. He’s going to impact the season more on his 24 starts that he gives a club. And he’s got the type of stuff where he might go 24 starts and he might not get the wins but your team might win 19 out of 24 games that he starts. He’s got that kind of talent. Where does that put you? That puts you with a pretty good leg up on what you’re trying to accomplish. So, that’s his ability. That’s his talent. The hitting, which is important, parallels what he does on the mound. So, he’s a two-way player. He’s going to contribute on both sides and I think this guy’s going to be phenomenal.”

What comes of Ohtani and his career is likely to happen on someone else’s watch. By the time he is again fully engaged in the end-to-end game, Ohtani may also have company. A small handful are playing the game both ways in the minor leagues, two of them – Brendan McKay and Tanner Dodson – for the Rays, an organization that often leans to the unconventional. In this area they have a template, named Shohei Ohtani. McKay and Dodson are unfinished by major league standards, however, which adds a variable: What happens when one of the skills arrives sooner than the other? An A-ball player who can pitch and hit, as McKay and Dodson did, is a long way from Ohtani’s rookie season.

“It’s something we talk about a lot,” said Chaim Bloom, Rays vice president, baseball operations. “Some of it plays into the humility aspect of it. We’re not smart enough to figure it all out. So we’re going to let the game tell us. … I don’t know if there’s enough of a sample of guys who have tried this to be too fine.”

Bloom and the Rays drafted both before they knew for sure Ohtani would succeed. They do know today that the possibility for success exists, that for the moment it looks long and lean and athletic, that it is confident, that his organization was careful and encouraging. That, yes, it will end in a sling, and that is temporary.

“We believe really strongly you have to keep your eyes open,” Bloom said. “It’s a new concept, and he is proof of the concept in the big leagues. He’s so unique. Even accepting the concept as different, every player is unique.”

Ohtani is different and was from the start. He saw it differently. The game was one thing, the way it’s almost always been played. He viewed it another way, the way he played it.

“There’s no doubt about his confidence level,” Scioscia said. “He had to come here very confident. Much like Mike Trout, sometimes he’s going to go up there and strike out three times. That fourth at-bat he’s going to win the game for you. I think Shohei has that same mentality of knowing that, ‘OK, maybe I struggled in this one situation. The next situation I will be better.’ I think he has that resiliency that you need. Plus, you talk about his athletic ability, it’s off the charts. But I think his will and his desire to be the best that he can be was very evident in any conversation we had. If you watched the way he pitched in big games or watched the way he hit, this guy wants to be the guy. That presence is something that gives you, as an organization, a lot of confidence that he’s going to succeed.”

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