Last Night in Baseball: Shohei Ohtani has another wild bobblehead night

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As OptaStats notes, it’s not just that this is Ohtani’s first 42 games besting the first 42 games of everyone else in terms of homers, runs, steals, and walks. It’s any 42-game stretch, from anyone. The fact that baseball is as old of a sport as it is, with MLB itself nearly as old, and that there are somehow still brand new occurrences happening statistically, is wild. That’s Ohtani, though. A player capable of so many seemingly unthinkable feats that society had to invent the idea of Tungsten Arm O’Doyle to better understand just how special he was.

Despite how it might feel, though, it’s not actually impossible to get Ohtani out. Not even on his bobblehead night. Just ask… wait, what? The catcher struck him out? The backup catcher?

Backup catcher Jhonny Pereda struck out Shohei

Well how about that. Subheadings don’t lie. On a night as big as the one Ohtani had, he somehow was taken down a peg by a position player on the mound. Baseball!

Pereda, per MLB.com, wanted to face Ohtani on a night when an Athletics player could request that kind of thing, given they ended up losing 19-2 to the Dodgers. The A’s backup backstop threw four pitches, none of them faster than 70 mph, and then cranked it all the way to a devastating 89 mph to try to catch one of MLB’s preeminent sluggers off-balance. Ohtani fouled the pitch off right into the catcher’s mitt, and that was that. 

You’d keep the ball that struck Ohtani out, too, even if your team lost by a couple of touchdowns and a field goal in the process.

Vintage deGrom

Gather round, children, your elders have a story to tell you about baseball back in their day. Of pitchers who pitched deep into games, of duels that didn’t involve the bullpen until it was time to close things out, if even then. This isn’t a debate about what’s better or what’s worse, but on Thursday night, we were given a glimpse of what things used to be like. For MLB as a whole, and for one pitcher specifically: Rangers’ hurler Jacob deGrom.

deGrom threw eight innings on just 96 pitches for the Rangers, scattering five hits while striking out seven in what became a shutout of the Astros once Shawn Armstrong closed things out with a scoreless ninth. That’s noteworthy on its own, yes, but dueling deGrom from Houston was their own ace, Hunter Brown. Brown also threw eight innings, striking out nine while allowing just four baserunners, but as he gave up a single run and deGrom did not, he took the L. 

As deGrom has been hurt so often in his career, and he’ll be turning 37 years old in just a few days, we should take the time to appreciate when he’s on the mound. There were few who could be argued to be his equal when he was in his prime, and starts like last night’s effort are a reminder of why that was.

Twins do their namesake proud

Back-to-back jacks from the Twins? Anyone can do this, but only the Twins can do it with this level of inherent wordplay. Here’s Dashawn Keirsey Jr. and Byron Buxton with the Twins’ first back-to-back homers of the season:

The Twins rendered the Orioles’ flightless not just on Thursday, but in the four-game series as a whole. Minnesota has now won 11 in a row, the longest streak in MLB this year, which has brought their record to 24-20 and put them in possession of the third of three wild card slots. The Orioles… well, their ‘25 isn’t going quite like that. And looks about as bad as the Twins’ season did before winning 11 in a row. Don’t worry, Baltimore, all you have to do is rip off nearly a dozen wins in a row and you’re right back in this thing, too. 

He threw how hard? 

This isn’t the majors, no, but with the way Jacob Misiorowski is pitching in Triple-A, he’ll be there before long. Here’s the 6-foot-7 right-hander dialing it up all the way to 103 mph for a strikeout during Thursday’s MiLB action:

The 2022 second-round pick is, as noted, the top pitching prospect in Milwaukee’s system, and has racked up 59 strikeouts in 49.1 innings of work at Triple-A this spring. MLB ranked him as the No. 72 prospect in the minors coming into the year, so there might not be an ace-in-waiting here, but then again, he was a second-round pick who is thriving at Triple-A and made it into a top-100 list even before then. Whether he’s a starter or a reliever in the long run is the question — given his length and that he pitches exclusively from the stretch, his delivery is sometimes difficult to repeat. But there’s no denying that 80-grade heater. 

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