Shohei Ohtani, Albert Pujols and Other Thoughts From the First Two Weeks of the Season
Happy two weeks of baseball! The early stretch of the 2022 season has provided us with some of the best and worst of what this game has to offer.
Some of those highlights include Vladimir Guerrero Jr. swatting three home runs against the Yankees, Clayton Kershaw shoving in his first start and Miguel Cabrera’s push for 3,000 hits. Among those lowlights are the dreadful attendance numbers in Oakland, Reds president Phil Castellini insulting Cincinnati fans and whatever the heck happened to the White Sox in the second inning of their 11–1 loss to the Guardians on Wednesday.
With all that’s happened over these last two weeks, now feels like a good time to run through some of the things that caught my eye so far this season.
Shohei Ohtani (of course)
His perfect game bid Wednesday night was the latest amazing performance from the most remarkable player in the game. After five innings, he hadn’t allowed a baserunner and had struck out 11 of the 15 batters he faced on just 60 pitches.
Astros catcher Jason Castro broke up the perfect game with one out in the sixth inning when he lined a soft single to center field. It’s true Ohtani still had a long way to go to complete the perfect game; after all, 5⅓ innings is less than 60% of the necessary 27 outs. But he was so dominant that it was easy to expect he’d do it. His slider was especially strong. Of the 35 sliders he threw, he got 11 whiffs on 15 swings and 12 called strikes.
He went 2-for-4 at the plate with one walk, a double and a bunt single, and he batted twice in the Angels’ six-run first inning. Ohtani struggled offensively over the first week of the season. Over the first six games, he was 4-for-25 with no home runs and eight strikeouts. He was off enough that he performed CPR to revive his dead bat in L.A.’s sixth game of the year. The next game, on April 14, Ohtani went 1-for-4 with a double and took off from there. Last Friday, he ripped his first two home runs of the season, and then he homered again Saturday. Since the CPR game, Ohtani is hitting .300 with three home runs and two doubles.
Benny Sieu/USA TODAY Sports
Vintage Albert Pujols? Not quite, but close!
Yesterday afternoon, I looked up Pujols’s Baseball Savant page to see whether the underlying data reflected his strong start with the Cardinals. This is what I saw:
Baseball Savant
That looks like peak Pujols, at least for the most part! He’s a part-time player now, platooning against left-handed pitchers and select righties, but he’s thriving in that role, just as he did last season with the Dodgers.
Let’s not get too ahead of things. Pujols probably isn’t going to finish the season with an expected batting average and slugging percentage in the 98th to 99th percentile as it was entering yesterday. Indeed, after he went 0-for-3 with three strikeouts last night in the Cardinals’ 5–0 loss to the Marlins, he’s down to the 90th percentile for both expected numbers.
That said, the main takeaway here is that Pujols can still produce as a big league hitter at 42 years old. Despite going hitless last night, Pujols is slashing .333/.417/.667 with two home runs, five RBIs and a 208 OPS+ in 24 plate appearances across six games.
Sprint speed leaderboards, top and bottom
When I shared the screenshot of Pujols’s savant page with Emma Baccellieri yesterday, she responded, “I’m sorry, but ‘sprint speed: 2’ is sending me.” Her message prompted me to look up which players are slower than Albert. There are five, along with two who are the same speed:
Baseball Savant
Yes, of course, Yadier Molina is the slowest player in the game. It’s still wild how much slower he is than the next slowest player.
On the flip side, the fastest player right now is Royals rookie phenom Bobby Witt Jr., which checks out. More surprising was the player ranked second: Mike Trout. Yes, coming off a year in which he played just 36 games due to a calf injury, the 30-year-old Trout is the second-fastest player in the league.
Trout had an injury scare Sunday when he was hit by a pitch on the hand. He missed all of the Angels’ three-game series vs. the Astros, but he’s expected back in the lineup tonight at home against the Orioles.
Seiya Suzuki is as good as advertised
The Cubs rookie reached base in each of his first 12 games before he went 0-for-4 last night. The early favorite to win the NL Rookie of the Year award, he’s slashing .343/.520/.743. His plate discipline is impressive for anyone—his 12.8% chase rate leads the majors—but it’s more remarkable considering this is his first season facing MLB pitching. He also hits for tremendous power and runs well.
Ya like Jazz?
Last night, SI NBA writer Rohan Nadkarni called out SI’s MLB staff for not writing about Marlins second baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. Contrary to Ro’s assertion, we “coastal elitists” are not willfully overlooking the exploits of the exciting young star. Steph wrote this excellent profile of Jazz last year. His tweet didn’t uncover a conspiracy so much as it revealed that he doesn’t read our baseball coverage, so I’ll assume he won’t be reading this newsletter.
Even so, I wanted to give Jazz some love. In 10 games this season, Chisholm is hitting .290 with a .774 slugging percentage. He hit his third home run of the year last night, a majestic blast into right center field. He waved to the crowd as he rounded the bases and did his signature Euro step just before he crossed the plate.
Have any questions for our team? Send a note to mlb@si.com.
1. THE OPENER
“Chasen Shreve all but skipped up the subway stairs into Manhattan on Tuesday night. He played for the winningest team in baseball, with the best pitching staff in baseball, and right at that moment—fresh off a doubleheader sweep of the Giants—he felt he was having the most fun in baseball.
“The Mets reliever poked his head out into the chilly air and grinned as another thought occurred to him: And we don’t even have deGrom yet.”
I didn’t expect to read a baseball story that leads with Chasen Shreve, but this fun anecdote is how Stephanie Apstein begins her column from this morning about the first-place Mets and their dominant rotation. You can read her entire story below:
The Mets Rotation Is Thriving—And It Isn’t Even at Full Strength by Stephanie Apstein
New York has MLB’s best record because of its league-best starting staff. And its best pitcher isn’t even healthy.
2. ICYMI
We’re still on Miggy Milestone Watch! He sits at 2,999 hits entering this weekend’s series at home against the Rockies. Emma Baccellieri wrote about watching Miguel Cabrera pull within one hit of 3,000 after three knocks Wednesday night against the Yankees and then get intentionally walked in his final plate appearance yesterday. This is a fun, insightful column about the shared experience of waiting for a major milestone.
Miguel Cabrera, a Hilarious Intentional Walk and Waiting for History by Emma Baccellieri
It was the perfect opportunity for Miggy to get his 3,000th hit and play the hero for the Tigers, a narrative dream. Instead, the Yankees walked him.
The Rockies are 8–4 to start the year. Their success is unexpected, and it probably isn’t sustainable, but this is a good sign that maybe their future isn’t as bleak as we thought when they traded Nolan Arenado before the 2021 season. One of the main reasons for hope in Colorado is Bud Black, who recently won his 1,000th game as a manager. Will Laws profiled the veteran skipper and detailed what he brings to the Rockies organization.
Bud Black Is the Right Manager to Lead the Rockies to Their Peak by Will Laws
His steady hand is behind Colorado’s hot start and instrumental to its organizational shift.
I’ve written about movies in previous editions of this newsletter, but this is the first time I’m mentioning one of the dorkiest things about me. I keep a list ranking my top-100 favorite movies and update it once every month. Why do I mention this? Because I was delighted when Nick Selbe filed a column that used No. 26 on The Martell 100 as its premise.
Checking in on Jeremy Peña, Matt Olson and MLB’s ‘The Other Guys’ by Nick Selbe
Replacing stars, especially homegrown fan favorites, is never easy. How are some of the newcomers asked to fill those big shoes doing this season?
One of the other highlights of this week was Freddie Freeman’s first game against the Braves. Tom Verducci was at Dodger Stadium and wrote this excellent column about closure, moving on and the call of home.
Freddie Freeman Is Exactly Where He Belongs by Tom Verducci
His first game against the Braves was about more than hugs and home runs. Ultimately, it was about returning home.
Peter Aiken/USA TODAY Sports
3. WORTH NOTING from Emma Baccellieri
Emma here, stepping in for Tom today with a bit on José Ramírez.
The Cleveland third baseman has (obviously) gotten off to a tremendous start. But perhaps the most impressive piece of it? How infrequently he’s struck out. That’s always been one of his strengths: The league strikeout rate has been at or above 20% since Ramírez’s rookie year in 2014, but other than an anomalous blip during the shortened pandemic season, he has never struck out at a clip above 14%. To do that in this era is impressive, especially with his consistent power.
And so far this year? He’s struck out just three times in 53 plate appearances for a strikeout rate of 5.7%. Which, yes, it’s still extremely early, all the usual caveats apply, etc. But it’s something to keep an eye on—particularly since Ramírez actually has been swinging more than usual, not less, while making contact even more than he has historically.
4. W2W4 from Matt Martell
Before we get into the what to watch for portion of the newsletter, let’s answer last week’s trivia question.
Last Week’s Question: Miguel Cabrera is about to become the seventh player in MLB history with at least 3,000 hits and 500 home runs. Can you name the other six?
Answer: Henry Aaron (3,771 hits; 755 home runs), Albert Pujols (3,308; 681), Willie Mays (3,293; 660), Eddie Murray (3,255; 504), Alex Rodriguez (3,115; 696), Rafael Palmeiro (3,020; 569).
That ties in nicely here, considering we’re still watching for Miggy’s 3,000th hit. He sits at 2,999, as we detailed above. I’m hoping he gets his milestone hit off Rockies right-hander Antonio Senzatela, who like Cabrera is from Venezuela. That would make a great moment even more special.
Also worth watching: The Padres (9–5) host the Dodgers (9–3) in the first series of the season between the two NL West rivals. The two teams met six times last April, when they were both considered two of the best teams in the majors, and those six games were epic. Only two of them were decided by more than three runs, and one of those two was far closer than the final score, 11–6, would suggest. In that game, the Dodgers scored five runs in the top of the 12th.
Once again, they are two of the best teams in baseball. Let’s hope for more of the same excitement this time around.
5. THE CLOSER from Emma Baccellieri
If you’re looking for a way to spend some time on this lovely Friday afternoon, might I suggest FanGraphs’ newest toy, on-pace leaderboards? We’re juuust far enough into the season to make a tool like this extremely fun: No, there’s nothing in here that should be taken as a projection of future performance, but that’s not the point! The point is just to mess around and enjoy what you find. Such as:
Nolan Arenado is on pace for the best season of all time by WAR. (Sorry, 1923 Babe Ruth and 2002 Barry Bonds, you can’t touch the 1.349 OPS of Arenado so far in April.)
Juan Soto is on pace for 173 walks.
The four pitchers on pace for 300 strikeouts or more? Clayton Kershaw (sure), Carlos Rodón (O.K.), Shohei Ohtani (duh) and … Tyler Danish.
Enjoy!
That’s all from us today. We’ll be back in your inbox next Friday. In the meantime, share this newsletter with your friends and family, and tell them to sign up at SI.com/newsletters. If you have any questions or comments, shoot us an email at mlb@si.com.
