Throws a 100-mile fastball lightly and easily blows a 100-mile batted ball. Shohei Ohtani (Angels)’s cartoon baseball is currently in progress. Now, it seems that the genre has surpassed the level of sports.
According to Baseball Savant, a major league statistics site, Ohtani’s average batting speed until the 4th (Korean time) was 102.4 miles per hour, 164.8 km. This is the first record in this category. Of the 264 players who met the Baseball Savant standard (number of games x 2.1 at-bats), only 7 players, including Ohtani and Mike Trout (4th), had an average exit velocity exceeding 100 mph.
Average exit velocity tends to drop as the game continues. 메이저놀이터Last year, the first place in this category was 95.9 miles (154.3 km) of home run king Aaron Judge (Yankees). Maintaining 100 miles is realistically difficult. Rather, attention is focused on whether or not to maintain the ranking. Ohtani has been ranked 7th for the past two years in a row.
Other metrics also show how well Ohtani has prepared for the season.
Of Ohtani’s 11 in-play batted balls, 10 were “hard hits” of 95 miles per hour (152.9 km) or more. The number of hard hits is tied for first with Vladimir Guerrero (Toronto), Paul Goldschmidt (St. Louis), and Anthony Santander (Baltimore). Among the players who hit five or more balls in play, no one has a higher hard hit rate than Ohtani (90.9%).
Attention is also focused on how long the increase in redemption will continue. Ohtani has been steadily drawing an upward trend in fastball restraints as well. The average fastball speed, which was 93.8 miles in 2020, rose to 95.6 miles in 2021 and 97.2 miles last year. Not only fastballs, but also splitters, cutters, sliders (sweepers), and curveballs all became faster.
In the opening game on the 31st of last month, the average speed of fastball was counted as 97.8 miles per hour (157.4 km). On the 6th, the starting matchup with ‘former Doosan’ Chris Flexen is drawing attention to the competition of the two pitchers’ fastballs. Flexen’s first fastball average speed of the season was 93.6 miles (about 150.6 km).
