Los Angeles Angels fans had waited nearly 700 days to see Shohei Ohtani make his return to the mound after spending the 2019 season as a designated hitter while recovering from Tommy John surgery.
Sunday was supposed to be an encouraging step for Ohtani as he got back to being a star-caliber pitcher and hitter. Instead, his outing against the Athletics lasted just 30 pitches with Ohtani allowing five runs and failing to record an out.
But most worrisome of all, Ohtani’s velocity was nowhere close to the heat he brought as a rookie before Tommy John.
On Sunday, Ohtani averaged just 92.9 mph on his fastball, which could have been attributed to poor mechanics (flying open too soon in his delivery). Still, as a rookie in 2018, Ohtani looked the part in his 10 pitching appearances before the arm injury. His four-seam fastball averaged 96.7 mph in 2018 and exceeded 100 mph on multiple occasions.
He looked nothing like that pitcher on Sunday, and baseball fans were worried — even if it was just a 30-pitch sample size after a long layoff and surgery.
We’ll have to see how Ohtani looks in the next appearance before there’s real cause for concern, but this wasn’t a great start — to say the least.
