No time like Sho-time for a little distraction
With the Blue Jays currently moonwalking into major-league mediocrity, having lost four games in a row and seven of the last eight, it’s a perfect time for the much-ballyhooed Rogers Centre debut of Japanese sensation Shohei Ohtani and his Angels.
Unless the Jays somehow find a way to stop their downward spiral, fans will be asking, “Who’s coming in that makes it worthwhile?” instead of “Let’s go see the Jays play.”
While the Jays’ season is taking on the feel of a minor fender-bender on a major highway — with people slowing down and greeted by, “Move along, there’s nothing to see here” — at least the sensational two-way star rookie Ohtani, in his only visit of 2018, is worth the trip. He won’t be pitching, having started and won against the Rays in his seventh outing on Sunday. He will likely act as Angels’ designated hitter.
The unique DH/RHP is batting .321 (27 for 84) with six homers, 17 RBIs and a .986 OPS. As a starting pitcher, he is 4-1 with a 3.35 ERA, striking out 52 batters in 40 1⁄3 innings, while allowing just 29 hits. Opponents thus far have managed one base hit in 44 at-bats against the devastating Ohtani splitfingered fastball.
Ohtani is far from a one-man show, accompanied into town by 3,000-hit star Albert Pujols and the third member of the holy trinity of Angels: the best player in baseball, Mike Trout. It’s all a solid argument to attend the series.
The Jays honestly believed they could sign the 23-year-old Ohtani to his first MLB contract back when he was on the market, posted by the Nippon Ham Fighters of the Japanese Professional League last December. The point man for the Jays’ efforts was Dan Evans, the former Dodgers GM and currently the Jays’ director of Pacific Rim operations, a highly respected presence in the Asian market.
The terms Ohtani finally accepted from the Angels included a $20-million (all dollars U.S.) posting fee to the Fighters, a $2.3-million signing bonus and the major-league minimum of $545,000 for 2018. Clearly, with those easy-to-handle numbers locked in by collective bargaining, many clubs could have afforded him, but the bottom line is that he wanted to play on the West Coast with the guarantee that the Angels gave him: that he would both pitch and hit. So far it’s been a huge bargain.
The decision to take less mandated money and leave home at age 23 was all Ohtani’s. The agreement with MLB restricts international players under 25 in terms of their ability to negotiate a freemarket wage. If the two-way star had waited two more years he could have made millions more, but he wanted his MLB clock to begin as soon as possible, and who can blame him.
The last time a Jays home game created a similar buzz for a Japanese player’s debut was Mariners outfielder Ichiro Suzuki’s first appearance at the SkyDome on May 11, 2001. A future hall of famer, Ichiro, 27, went 2-for-5 against Joey Hamilton and the Jays. It was electric, like he was a rock star at the ballpark, trailed by dozens of Japanese media as the first ever position player to make the move to MLB from the Land of the Rising Sun. He is still the best Japanese export among 55 players who have crossed the ocean to play in the majors.
I remember speaking to Mariners GM Pat Gillick at the time. He suggested Ichiro was the exception in his country. He opined that there were a maximum of nine others in Japanese baseball capable of playing in the majors, and that most of those were pitchers. In total, there have now been 55 Japanese players: 43 pitchers, six outfielders, four infielders, one catcher plus the hybrid Ohtani.
The history of Japanese play- ers in MLB is a work in progress. The posting system — seeing Japanese teams paid huge amounts for the right to negotiate with their star players — has stood as a barrier, with most of the players well into their prime, or even beyond it, before being allowed to move freely to North America.
The Blue Jays are not often mentioned in the mix with other marquee franchises that boast established Asian connections — the Dodgers, Yankees and Mariners — but prior to Ohtani, the Jays were one of the front-runners for another Japanese superstar, Yu Darvish.
Given a hot market for the talented right-hander at the 2011 winter meetings in Dallas, wherever GM Alex Anthopoulos went in the lobby of the Anatole hotel he was trailed by a hustling corps of a half-dozen or more Japanese journalists seeking Darvish news. But he eventually spurned Canada, choosing the Texas Rangers.
Jays history features just five Japanese-born players: righthanders Michael Nakamura (2004), Tomo Ohka (2007) and Ryota Igarashi (2012), infielder Munenori Kawasaki (2013-15) and outfielder Nori Aoki (2017). Of that quintet, Kawasaki may be the least talented and most beloved.
Meanwhile, Ohtani has a chance to become a true baseball ground-breaker given his role as both an overpowering starting pitcher and talented DH. Already there are other young players believing they can fill the same dual role at the next level. Babe Ruth is the poster boy for two-way players, although when he went to the Yankees in 1920, New York had him largely give up pitching. He recorded just 31 more innings, while becoming the game’s most famous player.
There is an interesting Toronto connection with Ohtani’s emergence as a hitter.
In the first month of the season, the lefty swinger was having trouble with fastballs on the inner half and elevated — purpose pitches. The Angels’ hitting coach, former Blue Jay and American League rookie of the year Eric Hinske, worked with him and experimented: eliminating the high leg kick and replacing it with a toe-tap as the pitch was delivered. The results have been sublime. Hinske was with the Jays from 2002-06.