Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani Compared to Hall of Fame Pitcher by Longtime Pitcher, Coach

Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani is a one-of-a-kind player with talent that may not ever be seen in MLB again. His ability to blast baseballs into the stands is unparalleled, but his prowess on the mound is just as unbelievable.

Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior recently compared Ohtani (as a pitcher) to Hall of Famer Nolan Ryan while on the Dan Patrick Show.

“It’s got a little bit of Nolan [Ryan] in him,” said Prior. “If he wants to just rear back and blow it by you, like, he’s going to do it. I think we’ve seen that, and obviously he has a very good and very nasty sweeper, but if he wants it he’s going to get 100 [mph] and he’s going to throw it right past you.”

Ryan amassed a 3.19 ERA across 27 seasons in MLB. He is the all-time strikeouts leader with 5,714, a record that is 839 more than the second place Randy Johnson, and did so with a brutal fastball, a 12-to-6 curveball, and circle changeup that would constantly keep hitters off-balance.

Ohtani threw his fastest offering of his career in June, a 101.7 mph fastball, despite still working to fully ramp up as a pitcher following a 2023 UCL surgery.

Prior continued to gush about his pitcher/slugger, but continued regarding Ohtani's mix of devastating speed and a combination of off-speed pitches in his arsenal to constantly confuse batters.

“We have a lot of guys who throw extremely hard in this league, and so the velocity is not nothing, but it isn’t as…unexpected as it used to be, but all of a sudden, this dude just out of nowhere is 100, 101, 102, and so that reminds of watching Nolan when I was a kid where it was just like, ‘alright, he knows I’m throwing a fastball, and here it is, and see what you can do with it’ and that’s pretty cool,” Prior said.

Ohtani has a 97.9 mph fastball on average, putting him in the 95th percentile among active pitchers, and uses it the most in his pitch mix (40.3 percent).

His sweeper has an average velocity of just 84.7 mph. Although his opposing batting average against it is .289 (up from .140 in 2023), it generates a swing and miss 37.5 percent of the time, and will hopefully get more effective with time.

Ohtani's slider (87.6 mph on average) has an opposing batting average of .188, with a whiff-rate of 51.4 percent. His slider is thrown just 12.6 percent of the time, compared to his sweeper being used 28.3 on percent of his offerings.

“As a coach, it’s one thing, but as a fan to watch him do what he does is pretty awesome,” Prior said.

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