Ohtani Shohei (29‧ LA Angels), who shocked the major leagues by starting a full-fledged pitching and other business from 2021, continues to show improvement as a pitcher. Last year, he ranked fourth in the American League Cy Young Award voting and was recognized for his performance.
He’s had some ups and downs, but his start this season isn’t too bad. Ohtani has been playing relatively well with a 5-1 record and 2.91 earned run average in his first 11 starts this season. His earned run average is higher than last year (2.33), but his batting average is 0.155, the highest in the league, down from last year (.203). Here, the strikeout rate improved from 33.2% last year to 35% this year. He has only 90 strikeouts in 65 innings.
In particular, this year, he is attracting more attention as a pitcher than a batter with his ‘Sweeper’, a pitch that has recently hit the major leagues. The sweeper, which has a wide horizontal curve, has become Ohtani’s signature pitch this season. Last year, the rate of use was 37.4%, but this year it increased to 42.6%. The sweeper’s hit rate is 0.143, and the miss rate is 39%. Ohtani’s sweeper is even considered one of the hard-to-beat ‘paddles’ in the local area.
However, panelists analyzed that Ohtani was not the best starting pitcher in the major leagues. As a result of the voting by 15 experts on the official Major League Baseball website (MLB.com) on the 2nd (Korean time), as a result of selecting the best starting pitcher rankings, Ohtani barely tied for 10th in the ‘TOP 10’.
Even Ohtani was outside the top 10 in the last ranking. Ohtani is also a monster, but it proves that monsters worse than Ohtani exist in the major leagues. MLB.com said, “Ohtani could not be excluded from the power rankings for a long time. Although it fell out of the last ranking, he did not allow a higher ranking even though he evaluated that he had a good start in a row at the end of May.
Then, who is the current best starting pitcher selected by experts? As a result of the ranking selection on the 2nd, Tampa Bay’s left-handed ace Shane Mcclanahan (26) was selected as the first. He rose vertically from 7th in the last ranking to 1st. Mcclanahan is 8-1 with a 2.07 ERA and 82 strikeouts in 69⅔ innings in 12 games this season. He throws a variety of pitches, and he is a rare starting pitcher with high perfection in all of them. He leads the video race between the American League this year.
Spencer Strider (25), a new ace right-hander of Atlanta, who is leading the National League Cy Young Award race, was selected for second place. Strider is recording an average ERA of 2.97 with 5 wins and 2 losses in 11 games of the season, and occupied the 100 strikeout notice faster than any other player in the league. He is showing a pitch that is hard to believe for a player who is in his third full-time season this year in the major leagues. Strider was ranked second in the last ranking, and kept that position in this ranking as well.
While Sonny Gray (Minnesota) kept the third place, Nathan Eboldi (Texas) jumped from 9th to 4th in the rankings. It can be interpreted that the recent Hotu relay has had an impact. This was followed by Prember Valdes (Houston), Luis Castillo (Seattle), Bryce Elder (Atlanta), Marcus Stroman (Chicago Cubs), and Joe Ryan (Minnesota). Valdez, Castillo, Elder, and Stroman are players who were not in the previous rankings, and have recently joined the rankings in recognition of their consistency.
Jack Gallon (Arizona),메이저사이트 who was ranked first in the last ranking, suffered greatly with 8 runs (5 earned runs) in 3⅔ innings against Pittsburgh on May 20, and fell to 10th place with Ohtani. Of course, as this ranking is affected by each appearance of the players, it may change greatly at the time of the next ranking selection.