Ohtani Allows Run in 1 Inning in Return to Mound for Dodgers

Watch Ohtani Allows Run in 1 Inning in Return to Mound for Dodgers - SportsGrid on Dailymotion

Transcript

00:00Joe Ranieri, they might have stayed up last night and watched the NBA Finals game number five,

00:03come down the stretch and watch OKC with a victory.

00:06But at the same time, if you had multiple screens, which most people do,

00:09you could have caught Shohei Otani back on the mound after, what, two long years

00:13coming back from elbow surgery, but still the MVP of Major League Baseball

00:18because how dominant he is at the plate.

00:20Well, he was back and everybody was watching.

00:23Was it all that dominant yesterday?

00:24Not necessarily.

00:25But what did you expect him to pitch six innings yesterday of no-hit shutout baseball?

00:29He went one inning, gave up two hits, even an earned run, and a strikeout?

00:34Not even one of those here that he got.

00:36But the questions were is, how would he look on the mound?

00:38He was just fine.

00:39And, Joe, I know you talked about it.

00:41The most important thing was not how many strikeouts or how long would he go.

00:44What was the velocity on his fastball?

00:47And you liked what you saw last night.

00:50Very much so.

00:51I mean, listen, it's the last thing to come back to pitchers coming back from Tommy John surgery

00:57is control, right, is command.

00:59That's the last thing to come back to him.

01:01The thing that you want to look for is, what kind of fastball does he have?

01:06Where is the velocity?

01:08It's very hard to make up three miles an hour, three and a half miles an hour from what you

01:13might have been.

01:14And so I think that tells you a lot.

01:16And what I saw last night, he threw nine four-seam fastballs in that first inning,

01:22and they averaged 99.1 miles per hour.

01:26He topped out at over 100, which I believe now is the, might be the fastest pitch any Dodger

01:33pitcher has thrown this season here.

01:35But all in all, in the outing, his fastball averaged right around 97 miles per hour.

01:41That's just tremendous, Donnie.

01:43I mean, coming back from Tommy John, that means the surgery worked, the rest will come.

01:49You can't, you can't teach velocity, right?

01:52So either the arm after the surgery has it or it doesn't.

01:56And in this case, it's very much back for Otani.