When Shohei Ohtani pitches, the chances are that his opponents won’t score.
Ohtani hasn’t allowed a run in five of his 10 starts this season. In another, he limited the damage to a solitary unearned run.
Only one run has been charged to him in the 25 innings he’s pitched over his last four starts.
Ohtani has been close to perfect.
He will have to remain that way until the end of the season if he is to have any chance to win the National League’s Cy Young Award.
As spectacular as Ohtani has been, this isn’t enough.
Not enough starts.
Not enough innings.
With the Dodgers using a six-man rotation to better manage their starters’ regular-season workloads, Ohtani has pitched only 61 innings this season.
The season isn’t even 40% complete and Ohtani is already 25 ⅓ innings behind the Phillies’ Cristopher Sanchez, who has started three more games than he has.
In starts and innings, Ohtani is also behind other Cy Young Award contenders such as Jacob Misiorowski (12 starts, 71 innings), Chris Sale (12 starts, 72 ⅔ innings) and Paul Skenes (13 starts, 70 innings).
Overcoming such a deficit in quantity will require Ohtani to maintain a sizable advantage in quality.
Even the greatest pitchers are due for an occasional stinker, but Ohtani can’t afford to have one.
Sanchez was pounded by the Cubs for six runs in 5 ⅓ innings on April 23.
Misiorowski’s ERA in April was 3.58.
A game like Sanchez’s or a stretch like Misiorowski’s will likely end Ohtani’s Cy Young Award candidacy.
Ohtani is pitching as if he knows that’s the case.
“I think a lot of starting pitchers, you feel your way into the game, give up a couple (of runs) early and you bear down,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “But I’ve noticed with Shohei, every run is a premium. He’s literally trying to throw a shutout every time out there where I don’t know that every starter has that mindset.”
In Roberts’ view, Ohtani doesn’t just bear down with runners on base.
“He’s not trying to sit back and let the stress be created,” Roberts said. “He’s doing a good job of minimizing it from the onset.”
To Roberts’ point: Ohtani allows an average of 0.79 walks plus hits per inning pitched.
Now, it should be pointed out here that in the one year in which Ohtani was a qualified pitcher, in 2022, he pitched better and better as the season progressed.
He made a career-high 28 starts that season, pitching 166 innings for the Angels to finish fourth in AL Cy Young Award voting.
By season’s end, he was arguably the best pitcher in baseball. In his last 12 starts of the year, Ohtani’s ERA was 1.73. In his last seven, it was 1.00.
Ohtani thinks he’s trending upward, saying he felt better in his win over the Diamondbacks on Wednesday than he did in his previous start when he pitched six no-hit innings against the Rockies.
“Well, I think it was better than last time,” Ohtani said in Japanese. “I don’t know if it was really good, but I think it was definitely better than last time.”
Ohtani has completed seven innings in two of his starts this season, but performances like that should become increasingly common for him. He should be a qualified pitcher.
Even then, Sanchez will have him beat in innings pitched by a substantial margin. Ohtani’s challenge is to make his ERA look equally small by comparison.
