Shohei Ohtani Will Take His Two-Way Talents to the Angels

It’s official: Shohei Ohtani, the so-called Babe Ruth of Japan, will take up his new life in the United States as a member of the Los Angeles Angels.

After meeting face to face with seven major league teams, but not, surprisingly, the Yankees, Ohtani, the star pitcher and designated hitter of the Nippon-Ham Fighters in Japan, settled on a big-market club on the West Coast. He will now set about trying to become baseball’s first two-way star since the player who inspired his nickname.

For a $20 million posting fee, a fairly modest bonus and a minimum-salary contract in 2018, the Angels get a 23-year-old player who is one year removed from being named the most valuable player of Japan’s Pacific League. The 6-foot-3, left-handed batter and right-handed pitcher gave up millions of dollars to come to the United States now instead of in two years, when he would have been a true free agent and received a contract most likely to have topped $100 million.

“Shohei is humbled and flattered by all the time and effort that so many teams put into their presentations and sincerely thanks them for their professionalism,” his agent, Nez Balelo, said in a statement. “In the end, he felt a strong connection with the Angels and believes they can best help him reach his goals in Major League Baseball.”

In any case, he is now certain to cause a stir in this country, considering his unusual combination of skills. And here are some relevant questions worth addressing:

Is it Otani or Ohtani?

Despite what you may have read, he prefers for his last name to be spelled Ohtani. In truth, his name does not directly translate from Kanji, the symbols used to write Japanese, into English letters. The translation is done through the way the words are spoken, so both Otani and Ohtani could be considered correct. But he did not exactly hide his preference: It was written “Ohtani” on the back of his Fighters jersey.

That there is ambiguity as to how to spell Shohei Ohtani’s last name is no fault of Ohtani’s. He had it written on the back of his jersey for the Nippon-Ham Fighters.CreditKyodo News, via Getty Images

How will the financials work?

The amount of money will not look anything like what the Yankees paid for Masahiro Tanaka when he left Japan. Under a reworked agreement between Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball, the winning bidder was required to pay a posting fee of $20 million to the Fighters. The team can then use its international bonus-pool money to give Ohtani a signing bonus. The Seattle Mariners had increased their bonus pool and had the most money to offer at $3.56 million. The Texas Rangers were second with $3.54 million. The Angels had $2.31 million.

Ohtani, as an international free agent who is under 25, is also limited to a minor-league contract and is subject to the typical salary restrictions of a player who has not yet become eligible for arbitration. As a result, he will start in the major leagues with a salary of $545,000 while Tanaka, who came over as a more established star during a time with fewer restrictions, earned a rookie salary of $22 million.

Is he a pitcher or a hitter?

The short answer is that he is both. Ohtani was a starting pitcher for the Fighters and also served as the team’s designated hitter. He has had as many as 382 plate appearances in a season and he has started as many as 20 games as a pitcher in a single season. It was an unusual setup even outside the United States, as the other starting pitchers on Ohtani’s Japanese team only had a handful of at-bats each.

So which is he better at, pitching or hitting?

That is where it gets more interesting. In 2016, which was his last full season, Ohtani managed to be named to two different spots on the Pacific League’s “Best 9”, which honors the best player at each position. It is not hard to see why considering Ohtani’s batting (.322/.416/.588, 22 home runs) and pitching (10-4, 1.86 E.R.A., 174 strikeouts) lines that year. While it is not a perfect measure of his quality at either skill, Ohtani received 190 of the 245 votes at designated hitter and only 111 at pitcher.

“If you ask Ohtani, he likes pitching better,” Fighters Manager Hideki Kuriyama told reporters in April. “If you ask me, I would say hitting. At this point, he’s a better hitter than pitcher. He’s still not a complete pitcher yet. He hits very naturally. He throws the ball very hard, but he’s not a complete pitcher yet.”

Despite that, many talent evaluators believe Ohtani’s best bet in the majors is to succeed as a pitcher.

Can he hit for power?

Ohtani had a .500 career slugging percentage in Japan, and 66 of his 171 hits over the last two years went for extra bases, but it would be surprising for him to be much of a power hitter in the majors. For reference, Hideki Matsui’s career slugging percentage went from .582 in Japan to .462 in the United States and Ichiro Suzuki declined from .522 to .403.

Ohtani, second from right, is 6-foot-3, giving him ideal size as a pitcher, though his manager for the Fighters considered him a better hitter.CreditKoji Sasahara/Associated Press

Why did he play so much less in 2017?

An ankle injury in the 2016 Japan Series resulted in Ohtani’s missing the World Baseball Classic and helped limit him to five pitching starts in 2017. His workload was also reduced as a batter: He appeared in 65 games at d.h. a season after starting 104.

His pitching was not as sharp. His E.R.A. went up to 3.20 thanks in part to a dramatic increase in walks, but it was too small of a sample size to draw any conclusions. His hitting mostly matched up with previous seasons in terms of performance.

What will he do in 2018?

Many possibilities exist should Ohtani prove to be capable of both pitching and hitting at the major league level. He could d.h. on days he does not pitch, and he might be best used as a sixth starting pitcher, which would keep him on a similar workload to the one he had in Japan while also keeping him fresh for batting duties. The possibility does exist, though, that he will require time to adjust to the superior competition in the major leagues since he is younger than the majority of Japanese stars who have come over in the past.

Any talk of Ohtani playing the outfield or truly playing every day is probably just talk. He has appeared in the outfield a total of eight times the last four seasons, and all eight appearances were in 2014. His typical workweek in Japan consisted of starting a game as a pitcher, being a d.h. for the next few days, then taking two days off before his next start. To think that he could handle more frequent work, and the demands of playing a position in the field, after not doing so against lesser competition in Japan, is a stretch.

Brooks Kieschnick of the Milwaukee Brewers was the last player to be a true contributor as both a pitcher and batter, serving as a reliever, pinch-hitter and outfielder in the 2003 and 2004 seasons.CreditJonathan Daniel/Getty Images

How unusual would it be for him to bat and pitch regularly?

It would be extremely unusual. No American League pitcher has had more than 15 plate appearances in a season since the d.h. was introduced in 1973. Only 17 American League pitchers have even had a season of double-digit plate appearances in that time frame despite the advent of interleague play in 1997, which gave them considerably more opportunities to bat.

Pitchers get more of a chance to hit in the National League, but even in a league with no d.h., pitchers rarely crack 100 plate appearances. Last year, the National League’s leader in plate appearances among pitchers was Jacob deGrom of the Mets, with 77.

In the early part of baseball’s modern era, it was not entirely unheard-of to spend time as both a pitcher and a position player. From 1901 to 1919, a player had 200 plate appearances as a batter and 10 appearances as a pitcher in the same season 12 times. But since then, only Willie Smith of the 1964 Los Angeles Angels managed to pull off such a feat. Despite being an above-average pitcher and outfielder that season, Smith went on to pitch just three more times in his career.

The last player to truly make a go of contributing as a pitcher and a hitter was Brooks Kieschnick, who was a reliever, a pinch-hitter and an outfielder for the Milwaukee Brewers. In the 2003 and 2004 seasons, he combined for 74 appearances as a pitcher and 133 plate appearances as a batter.

While Babe Ruth was a fantastic pitcher early in his career for the Boston Red Sox, and later became the game’s most feared slugger, he only had one season where he approached being a full-time player in both skills.CreditAssociated Press

But what about Babe Ruth?

It’s true that Ruth was an emerging star as a pitcher before he became baseball’s most feared slugger, but for the most part those years did not overlap. The closest he came to excelling at both was with the Boston Red Sox in 1918. That year, as a key player for a World Series-winning team, the 23-year-old Ruth started 19 games as a pitcher and 57 as an outfielder. He led the majors with 11 home runs and had a 2.22 E.R.A. that was 22 percent better than the league average. But Ruth’s best pitching seasons were for the Red Sox in 1916 and 1917, while his best hitting seasons came for the Yankees from 1920 to 1934.

The comparison between Ruth and Ohtani, however, is one that is unfair to Ohtani. It is, quite frankly, ridiculous to include the phrase — But what about Babe Ruth? — in any serious discussion about the two, regardless of how talented Ohtani may be.