Shohei Ohtani lamented the flaws in his performance Wednesday night -- even after hitting a leadoff home run and positioning the Dodgers for a combined no-hitter.
, saw Ohtani clobber a 424-foot home run to straightaway center field in the bottom of the first, then give up just one run in six no-hit innings to put his ERA to 0.82.
And yet, in the wake of it, he lamented the four walks, the one hit by pitch and the overall inefficiency that abbreviated an otherwise dominant performance.
"Of course you want to avoid the hits, but the result of that was a lot of walks today," Ohtani, speaking through an interpreter, said after the Dodgers'in the eighth inning. It went for the Rockies' only hit of the night. Their only run came after a walk and a hit by pitch were followed by two fielder's choice groundouts in the fourth inning.
It was the only damage off Ohtani, even though he threw a season-low 56.6% of his pitches for strikes.and later bemoaned his lack of feel. Asked whether he had ever managed someone with such unreasonable expectations, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts provided a quick answer. On offense, Ohtani has put an elongated hitting slump behind him, slashing .383/.508/.723 over his past 13 games. Before Ohtani, no man had ever hit a leadoff home run as a pitcher.
He has now done so three times -- in Game 4 of last year's National League Championship Series and twice in the past week. On the mound, he is arguably the front-runner in a loaded National League Cy Young Award race. The likes ofHis is the lowest ever for a Dodgers starter through his first nine starts of a season, topping what Fernando Valenzuela had done by this point in 1981.
Ohtani is also just the third pitcher since 1920 to allow no more than five earned runs in no fewer than 55 innings through his first nine pitching appearances, according to ESPN Research, joining"I know I say the same thing a lot, but it's just the feel," Ohtani said.
"When something's off offensively, defensively, I could tell, and I just really couldn't find it. "br/]
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