Shohei Ohtani took the mound against AL West rivals Astros Tuesday night and recorded his first loss of the season, despite seven strong innings of work.
Ohtani finished the outing with 103 pitches, his second-highest total of the season, with seven strikeouts and three runs allowed. He was outdueled by Astros ace Framber Valdez, who only allowed a single run and fanned 12 in eight innings. Ohtani is now at a 2.74 ERA and has given up 12 runs over his last 18 innings.
Ohtani allowed yet another home run against the Astros, making it the third consecutive start with a home run allowed. This time it came against an unlikely opponent, defensive catcher and former teammate Martin Maldonado. The home run once again came off of Ohtani’s signature sweeper.
“The pitch location was bad, so it’s on me,” Ohtani said after the game. “I’m not hitting the spots I need to.”
Ohtani finished his start strong and came back in the sixth and seventh innings to keep the Halos in the game.
Ohtani mentioned after his previous start that he didn’t like that hitters were able to lift the ball against him. Against the Astros, he induced 13 groundballs. The increase in groundballs may be a result of his increased sinker usage. He dramatically increased his sinker usage, throwing it 32 times. In just one start, he threw his sinker as many times as all of his other starts combined.
In his last start, Kazuhiro Sasaki pointed out that Ohtani needed to adjust his game plan. Ohtani did just that. Ohtani threw his sweeper only 39% of the time, compared to his season average of nearly 50%.
The decrease in sweeper usage and change in gameplan may also have been a result of a new catching partner in Chris Okey, who was filling in for the injured Chad Wallach.
“It’s difficult for catchers to catch pitches that they haven’t seen before,” Ohtani said. “I didn’t know his blocking data, so it was weighing the risks of throwing [certain] pitches,” Ohtani said.
Ohtani threw his splitter just once, and his average horizontal movement on his sweeper was once again down to 15 inches compared to the season average of 17 inches.
Ohtani also was dealing with a cracked middle finger, but said it was not an issue.
“I didn’t really feel it and I was good in the sixth and seventh, and the pitches I threw weren’t bad so I don’t think it had a big impact,” Ohtani said.
Ohtani’s next start will be against the Baltimore Orioles at Camden Yards on May 16, 6:35 PM EST/ 3:35 PM PT.
