If you regularly watched National League baseball from 2006-08, there’s a good chance you saw Will Ohman pitch. The lefty reliever ranked 10th in the NL in ’06 by appearing in 78 games for the Cubs, and then second in the league with 83 appearances for the Braves in ’08.
Born in Frankfurt, Germany on a U.S. Army base, Ohman was drafted in the eighth round by the Cubs in 1998 out of Pepperdine. He kicked off his big league career in 2000 by inducing Marquis Grissom to ground out as part of a scoreless inning. Ohman underwent Tommy John surgery in 2002, but fully recovered and in total appeared in 483 games for the Cubs, Braves, Dodgers, Orioles, Marlins, and White Sox in his ten-year career.
Ohman put together a sub-4.00 ERA in three different seasons, including a 2.91 mark in ’05. Among lefty relievers who tossed at least 100 innings from 2005-06, Ohman ranked sixth with a 25.2 K%. The list of Ohman strikeout victims includes Ken Griffey Jr., Todd Helton, Joe Mauer, Jim Thome, Bobby Abreu, David Ortiz, Barry Bonds, David Wright, Adrian Beltre, and Derek Jeter. In his career, Ohman held lefties to a .206 batting average.
Ohman’s website notes that he also “represented Germany in the World Baseball Classic Qualifier Tournaments in both 2012 and 2016.” He later served as the pitching coach of the Palm Beach Cardinals. Will now runs Ace Baseball, and he’s on Twitter @TheWillOhman.
Will told me he’s followed MLBTR since his playing days. We were thrilled to host him for a live chat today; you can click here to read the transcript.
Also, if you’re a current or former MLB player reading this, come do a chat with us! It’s fun and easy and only requires an hour of your time, and you choose which questions you publish and answer. Click here to contact us.
Oh, man!
Missed this. Really wanted to know his songwriting process for “I see a darkness” though.
Not bad
If he told you, it would result in death to everyone.
Loved his “back to back games” Barry Bonds memory!
Yeah. That shows you how insane Bonds was at hitting. For those games Barry Bonds hit .500 against him with an OPS of 2.500 and he was proud of it. That’s not a knock on Ohman. I would be pretty proud, too.
There’s actually a good article on Sports Illustrated about that homer run Bonds hit off if Ohman. It was Bonds home run #753 to bring him within 2 home runs if Hank Aaron’s record.
Just seen Will pitching on the MLB network which was the first time I heard his name in a while, then here he is again. Making his comeback! Forgot he was a Dodger bc of the injury
Will was a pretty solid LOOGY back then. Its a total contrast to last weeks chat with Shea Hillenbrand. Two very different people who lived to very different playing experiences
I love the mention of Juan Pierre.
I still think it’s really cool that MLB players read/visit this site on a regular basis. I wonder how many of them read the comments? There can be some pretty harsh criticisms in the comment section. I guess that comes with the territory though.
The Baltimore Orioles catcher who did a chat said a lot of them read the comments so to “keep that in mind and be kind” because players are usually already feeling pretty down if they are struggling in some way.
Very long chat.
I’m impressed!
These players chats never cease to entertain me. I was surprised how articulate his answers were, so he added already something by his style alone (being German, I could mention some stereotypes, which I actually won’t). Thanks a lot to all involved!
Gruß,
BSHH
83 games with the Braves and for the life of me, I can’t remember him lol… brutal