Shohei Ohtani won’t pitch at Yankee Stadium as Angels do what’s best for them
The Los Angeles Angels made the smart decision to focus on Shohei Ohtani’s health instead of the hyped-up matchup with Masahiro Tanaka.
That sound you hear is all the air going out of the much-hyped pitching matchup between Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels and Masahiro Tanaka of the New York Yankees on Sunday afternoon. Angels manager Mike Scioscia made the decision based on needing to manage his star two-way player’s workload. This is now the second massive Japanese showdown to fizzle out, as Ichiro Suzuki announced his retirement just days before Ohtani was set to pitch against the Seattle Mariners.
Sure, this would have been a very important matchup for Major League Baseball, especially on a global scale, but the Angels are not beholden to making sure the best matchups for TV and marketing go off without a hitch.
Ohtani has been managed very well to date. He has thrown 40.1 innings in his seven starts with at least six days rest between each start. Ohtani stayed below 100 pitches in each of his first five starts, but has seen that number creep up over 100 the last two times out. Extra care does need to be taken when managing his innings because he threw only 25.1 last year. Unlike most Japanese phenoms that come over to MLB, Ohtani was not run into the ground. His career-high is only 160.2 from his age-20 season. Contrast that with Tanaka, who threw over 220 innings and had 14 complete games in his age-22 season.
Of course, fans from both sides of the planned matchup are taking the news extremely well.
Ohtani is as soft as a marshmallow... is he ever gonna pitch in New York? https://t.co/HItgkjp2KB
— Kyle Walker (@Kyle_Walker7) May 24, 2018
Workload management 😂😂😂 Ohtani really is the softest player in the game. He has the chance to pitch against one of the best teams in baseball and face his fellow countryman head to head. He’s just scared of the bright lights. https://t.co/atp8ObOW2O
— J U (@jayu62) May 24, 2018
Come on, people. That’s not what it’s about. Try just a little bit harder with your “analysis.”
What the Angels and Ohtani are doing is unprecedented. There has not been a player like this in modern baseball, and he has been blowing all reasonable expectations out of the water. Seeing him pitch in Yankee Stadium against countryman Tanaka would have been fun, but getting an entire season of Cy Young caliber pitching is much more important to the long-term hopes of the player and team.