With his arm forming a 90-degree angle at his elbow, Shohei Ohtani clenched his right hand like an umpire signaling an out.
The actual home plate umpire, Tripp Gibson, didn’t make the same gesture.
Fernando Tatis Jr. was ruled safe at home. Three batters into his first game pitching for the Dodgers, Ohtani was charged with a run.
Ohtani pointed his glove at Gibson. He screamed. He turned his head in the direction of the Dodgers dugout, waving his glove as if to urge the bench to challenge the call.
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The Dodgers saw another side of Ohtani on Monday in their 6-3 victory over the San Diego Padres, but that entailed more than him taking the mound and throwing a couple of 100-mph fastballs.
Ohtani the pitcher, they learned, isn’t as playful as Ohtani the hitter. He snarls. He barks. He’s emotional, even downright combative at times.
This temperament could explain why Ohtani pitched the way he did in his first game in two seasons — why he threw as hard as he did, why he couldn’t control his fastball, why his sweeper lacked its usual movement.
Hitting is what Ohtani does for fun. Pitching is what he treats as work, and Ohtani was amped up to return to the mound.
“I was more nervous than when I’m just a hitter,” Ohtani said in Japanese.
His performance reflected that. In the one inning he pitched as an opener, he was charged with a run and two hits. He threw 28 pitches, of which only 16 were strikes.
“My arm was moving a little too fast, so pitches were going more to the glove side than I anticipated,” Ohtani said.
His first pitch was a 97.6-mph fastball that was fouled off by Tatis. He averaged 99.1 mph with his four-seam fastball and 97.4 mph with his sinker, throwing 13 pitches at 98 mph or faster. He was clocked at 100.2 mph against Luis Arraez and 99.9 against Manny Machado.
That was considerably faster than Ohtani threw in live batting practice and considerably faster than the Dodgers were expecting him to throw in this game.
“I wanted to be around 95-96 as much as possible,” Ohtani said.
Ohtani gave up a single to Tatis on a 99.1-mph fastball that was left over the heart of the plate. Tatis advanced to second base on a 98.3-mph wild pitch and third on a single that Arraez hit off a 98-mph sinker.
With runners on the corners, Ohtani thought he struck out Machado on a sweeper, but he was ruled to have checked his swing. Ohtani pointed at Gibson and appealed for a strike but to no avail. Ohtani unironically made a Joe Kelly pouty face.
Two pitches later, Machado scored Tatis with a sacrifice fly to center field.
“A little more animated than he usually is,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said of Ohtani.
Roberts already knew Ohtani would be like this, as he’d spoken to people familiar with Ohtani, including former Angels manager Phil Nevin.
“I guess as a pitcher, he shows a lot more emotion and gets frustrated when things don’t go well or he doesn’t do what he’s supposed to do on the mound,” Roberts said with a chuckle.
Ohtani was more in control when he retired Xander Bogaerts for the final out of the inning, and he pointed to the at-bat as a highlight.
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“I was able to relax and pitch,” he said.
Ohtani started by attacking him with a sweeper that was called for a strike. He followed that up with a 95.6-mph sinker that missed low, but forced Bogaerts to ground out for the third out on another sinker, this one on the inside half of the plate. That pitch was 95.4 mph.
After that, Ohtani strapped on protective gear and slipped on batting gloves while standing on the railing in front of the Dodgers’ bench. As a hitter, he finished the game two for four with a walk, two runs scored and two runs batted in.
In the batter’s box and on the basepaths, his demeanor softened. By the time he reached third base in the Dodgers’ five-run fourth inning, he was sharing laughs with Machado.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
