Shohei Ohtani’s first look on the mound with pitch clock goes easily

Shohei Ohtani knew when he entered spring coaching that one among his greatest challenges can be the pitch clock.

The Angels’ two-way star made his first look as a pitcher in a spring recreation on Tuesday. He pitched 2 1/3 scoreless innings in opposition to the Oakland Athletics, placing out two and strolling two, and not using a clock violation in his 34 pitches.

Ohtani took to the PitchCom machine this spring to call his personal video games. That saves time on the variety of alerts he offers a catcher to get on the sector he desires to throw.

Whether or not he may pitch throughout the allotted time restrict—15 seconds between pitches with the bases empty, 20 seconds with runners on base, and 30 seconds between batters—wasn’t a lot of a priority to anybody on the crew.

What supervisor Phil Nevin did take into consideration was how the time restrict would have an effect on the intimidation issue Ohtani has on opposing hitters.

“While you’re standing within the field and Nolan Ryan is pacing the hill,” Nevin mentioned, “you’re like, ‘Oh, rattling, what’s he going to do subsequent to me,’ proper? I feel Shohei has that presence about him.

“The sooner these guys work and the extra a batter can sit within the field and never be uncomfortable, that may change just a few issues as a result of he has that intimidating look and the best way he strikes across the mound. He nonetheless has that, that’s not going to take that away, but it surely’s going to vary a bit bit and the way he goes about it.

Ohtani acknowledged after his first gaming expertise with the clock that he’ll proceed to attempt to adapt to it all over the place.

“I couldn’t actually inform if I used to be intimidating the batters or not, in order that’s probably not an issue,” Ohtani mentioned by means of interpreter Ippei Mizuhara. “As for the pitch clock, it’s the identical for everybody. Everybody has to adapt.

“It’s going nicely up to now, however I really feel like I’m being rushed a bit. So long as I hold getting video games underneath my belt, I needs to be good.