Long-awaited Ohtani start ends quickly

OAKLAND — Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani pitched in a major league game Sunday for the first time in nearly two years, and he didn’t record an out before manager Joe Maddon sent him to the bench during a 6-4 loss to the Oakland Athletics.

The most anticipated pitching performance of the year ended less than 20 minutes after it began, with Ohtani giving up five runs.

The disastrous outing opened with a called strike on a 93-mph fastball that entered Marcus Semien’s zone over the heart of the plate. It ended on a single that bounced through a gap on the right side of the infield. In between, Ohtani threw 15 of his 30 pitches for strikes, issued three consecutive walks and gave up three hits and four runs. The fifth run scored when Matt Andriese, who pitched 52⁄3 scoreless innings in Ohtani’s place, induced a double play.

Ohtani performed so poorly that he was able to throw only two splitters, his best pitch. Batters hit only .036 (two for 55) off it in his award-winning rookie campaign.

Ohtani’s effort — or lack of it — doomed the Angels. His teammates couldn’t absolve him of the five runs he was charged. With a three-run homer and a sacrifice fly, Mike Trout only came so close.

“He just didn’t throw the ball very well,” Maddon said. “I can’t sit here making excuses for him. I’m not going to do that. It just wasn’t his day. The fastball wasn’t coming out, there was no deception in his pitches. The hitters will tell you that. These are major league hitters. The walks were a big part of it.

Had he righted himself by forcing those couple three hitters to put the ball in play, he might have had a different result.”

The Angels had eagerly awaited Ohtani’s return to a major league mound since Sept. 5, 2018, when they learned the ulnar collateral ligament in his right arm was torn and would need repair. In the 22 months that followed, general manager Billy Eppler and company improved the infrastructure of the team to which Ohtani the pitcher would come back. They signed Trout to a historic 12-year contract, convinced Anthony Rendon to commit eight years to playing in Anaheim and bolstered the team’s pitching depth.

They could have given the lead role of the staff to one of the four top-level starting pitchers available on the free-agent market last winter but they held off. Ohtani, who served only as a designated hitter in 2019, was nearly ready to pitch again. They had no reason to doubt he could lock up the title of rotation ace.

Ohtani’s first attempt to earn the label was so rotten that Ohtani seemed agitated as he spoke to reporters at a faster clip than usual.

Entering Sunday, Ohtani had spent roughly two months pitching to his own teammates without the ability to replicate in his mind the atmosphere of a major league game. He expected he would feel the adrenaline rush back as soon as he faced a rival.

He was wrong. He had such poor feel for Sunday’s game he couldn’t even pitch at full intensity. His average fastball Sunday registered 93 mph — 3 mph slower than he threw it in 2018.

Physical health wasn’t a concern, Ohtani said. And it was not as though Ohtani had failed to approach 100 mph with a pitch since having Tommy John surgery. Eppler said last week that Ohtani’s fastball was clocked at 97 mph before training camp began in July.

Ohtani acknowledged his mechanics on the mound might be a slight issue, but the environment loomed much larger. The gargantuan Coliseum sat eerily quiet, save for the crowd noise emitted by the speakers. The only person in the seats behind home plate was Angels quality assurance coach Tim Buss, who made space for himself among a sea of cardboard cutouts.

“I was focused more on throwing the ball than on the feelings of trying to get the hitter out,” Ohtani said in Japanese.

A couple of hours before Ohtani emerged for his warmups, Maddon sat in his stadium office in front of an iPad screen and told reporters in a videoconference call Ohtani was “ready to rock and roll” with several innings of work. He gushed about Ohtani’s ability to manipulate the ball. He said he felt fortunate to watch Ohtani blossom from up close.

“He’s just dripping with talent on all levels,” Maddon said.

Ohtani didn’t live up to Maddon’s words. But he will receive more chances to prove them right.