When Shohei Ohtani is concentrating within the batter’s field, what’s that have like for him? Does he really feel as if the stadium is silent? Does he really feel as if he’s not considering?
“I feel as if I’m concentrating,” he stated.
His light-hearted response elicited a refrain of laughter from the Japanese reporters within the Dodger Stadium interview room.
There continues to be no rationalization for a way Ohtani does what he does. In his first-ever postseason sport, Ohtani performed on Saturday as he did in his record-breaking common season.
He smoked a three-run house run within the second inning to erase a three-run deficit.
He dropped a broken-bat single into middle discipline within the fourth, contributing to a three-run surge that moved the Dodgers forward and despatched them on their approach to a 7-5 victory over the San Diego Padres in Recreation 1 of their Nationwide League Division Sequence.
“You know, Shohei is Shohei,” outfielder Teoscar Hernández stated. “We didn’t expect anything less than that, than what he showed today. He’s the guy that’s gonna guide us through all of this, and we’re gonna follow him and try to play at the same level as him.”
For essentially the most half, the Dodgers are the identical workforce they have been final 12 months. Their beginning pitching is horrible. Their hitters are prone to slumps. However they’ve Ohtani.
With out Ohtani, they may not have reached the playoffs this season. With him, they could possibly be World Sequence champions.
He’s essentially the most bodily gifted participant in baseball and he’s essentially the most pushed participant in baseball, however what actually separates him from others is his means to calm himself within the batter’s field no matter how excitable he might be outdoors of it.
“Well, I’m clear about what I want to do and I head into my plate appearance prepared to a certain degree,” Ohtani stated. “I think calmly about what I prepared for, and I direct my attention to the pitcher.”
Saturday supplied one other instance.
Within the moments main as much as first pitch, Ohtani seemed as if he was able to rush the sphere. Whereas Dodgers starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto warmed up, he was hopping up and down behind his workforce’s bench along with his bat already in hand.
Shohei Ohtani celebrates within the dugout after hitting a three-run house run within the second inning towards the Padres on Saturday.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Occasions)
When Ohtani confronted Padres starter Dylan Stop within the backside half of the inning, his demeanor fully shifted. Out of the blue, he was the calmest participant on the sphere.
How does he make that transition?
“I don’t even know,” he stated. “When I go to the batter’s box, I automatically concentrate.”
His supervisor was additionally mystified.
“I don’t know how that happens,” supervisor Dave Roberts stated. “He certainly has that switch.”
In his first at-bat, Ohtani was late on a excessive 99-mph fastball by Stop and flied out to left discipline. In his subsequent flip on the plate, with two out and two males on, Ohtani was thrown one other excessive fastball by Stop, this one at 97 mph.
Ohtani clobbered the pitch over the proper discipline wall. The three-run blast leveled the sport, 3-3.
Ohtani’s demeanor modified once more as he watched the flight of the ball. He screamed and violently flung his bat to the aspect.
As much as that time, ideas of here-go-we-again have been beginning to enter the collective consciousness of a workforce that was eradicated at this stage of the postseason in every of the final two seasons.
“I mean, you could almost feel it in the stadium,” third baseman Max Muncy stated. “But then, thankfully, we have a guy whose name is Shohei Ohtani, and he injected an absolute lightning bolt into the stadium. From then on, it was just, like, ‘All right, we got this, we’re good, this is not the same as years past.’”
Yamamoto gave up two extra runs within the third and last inning of his disastrous begin, however the Dodgers responded by scoring 4 instances within the fourth.
Within the Dodgers’ 7-5 win within the opening sport of the Nationwide League Division Sequence, Shohei Ohtani hit a three-run house run to tie the sport. And 6 scoreless innings from the Dodgers’ bullpen saved the lead from altering.
Ohtani wasn’t simply resistant to Dodgeritis. He was additionally the vaccine.
“Early in the first game, I think you tighten up,” Ohtani stated. “They took three runs, but I think we created a good flow by quickly catching up in good form.”
When he was requested if he was nervous, Ohtani didn’t watch for interpreter Will Ireton to repeat the query to him in Japanese.
“Nope,” Ohtani replied in English.
He smiled.
He later defined in Japanese, “I’ve been practicing since I was small for this. I’ve been doing this thinking I want to play on a stage like this. I think I’m more looking forward to this [than I am nervous].”
Twelve years after he rejected a proposal to signal with the Dodgers to begin his skilled profession in Japan and 7 years after he selected to interrupt into essentially the most aggressive league on the earth with the downtrodden Angels, he was lastly right here.
Ohtani was lastly in a significant league postseason, and he was prepared.
