⚾ Baseball Bytes: Ohtani in Full

Shohei Ohtani returns to the mound — and reignites a two-way debate. Plus, the Giants' Devers double-down in a wild NL West, and Gage Wood logs a College World Series performance for the ages.

Welcome to Baseball Bytes^¹ — a column in which I point out several byte-sized pieces of information that jumped out to me from my various baseball spreadsheets. If you’ve noticed a Baseball Byte of your own, email me and I’ll feature it in a future column!

⚾ The Sho Must Go On

Shohei Ohtani took to the mound for the first time in 664 days on Monday night — and he quickly reminded us that he’s still the unicorn of modern baseball. Though he only threw 28 pitches over a single inning of work, allowing 2 hits and an earned run, he averaged 98-99 mph on his fastball and settled down after a somewhat shaky start to record a couple of groundouts and finish the frame.

Oh, and then later on, he also tallied two clutch hits and drove in a pair of runs at the plate as the Dodgers beat the Padres 6-3. Just another really busy day at the office again… even though Ohtani’s place of work had shifted from Orange County to Chavez Ravine since the last time we saw it happen (and his work outfit had changed from Angels red to Dodger blue.)

The fact that Ohtani is once again a two-way player was a throwback to the heady days of 2021, when practically everything he did was an MLB first since the days of Babe Ruth (or at least Bullet Rogan). There isn’t another individual baseball player alive who can make you drop everything in the middle of an NBA Finals game and switch over to see what he’s going to do. The game is better, more exciting and more popular when Ohtani is doing this thing that only he is able to do.

But his debut pitching game of 2025 was also an encapsulation of why the two-way version of Ohtani, thrilling as it is, may not be built to last forever.