Scouting report for pitching to Shohei Ohtani

Prior to every game, a team’s starting pitcher meets with his catcher and pitching coach to game plan for every hitter in the opposing lineup.

Some of those plans are simple: pump velocity high in the zone, steady dose of breaking balls low and away, avoid first-pitch fastballs, etc.

How do opposing pitchers even begin to approach facing one of the best hitters in the game? While certainly not an easy task, a handful of pitchers and catchers recently pulled back the curtain for MLB.com on how they typically approach the first 50-50 player in Major League history.

To protect any potential trade secrets, all players spoke to MLB.com on the condition of anonymity. Each player is also a member of a non-postseason team who faced Ohtani at some point in the second half this season.

In a pitcher’s perfect world, he could avoid pitching to Ohtani altogether.

“If you have a base open, you can pitch around him a little bit,” one NL pitcher said. “But again, it’s the Dodgers — that’s a high-powered lineup. So you’ve got to be smart with him. You’ve got to make sure that you’re thinking with him, because he’s trying to think with you. Try to outthink him and outwork him.”

Let’s take a closer look at how a pitcher just might be able to do that.

This might go without saying — and apply to every big league hitter — but it’s particularly true with Ohtani. You might get away with a mistake from time to time against most hitters. You rarely, if ever, will against Ohtani.

“You make good pitches and hope he gets himself out,” one AL pitcher said. “He is very good. He’ll hit good pitches. He’ll also hammer mistakes. That’s what really good hitters do is they don’t miss your mistakes, and they do damage with them.”

Added an NL pitcher: “Don’t give him something too good to hit. Hit your spots. Don’t miss.”

So what exactly are “your spots” against Ohtani?

“I don’t really want to give it away because it’s counterproductive to just kind of give away the game plan, but I can tell you — if you execute it — most of the time, you should be all right,” one NL catcher said. “Obviously, he’s a really good hitter, so he’ll make you pay if you miss, but I don’t really want to give out our plan of attack.”

One element that came up repeatedly: Don’t ever become predictable against Ohtani.

“You’ve got to mix it up. You can’t go the same speed to the same location,” another AL pitcher said. “So, you’ve got to be able to go up, down, in, out. You either have to pitch him backward or you have to speed him up early to expose him to breaking balls later. I mean, it’s tough because even if he mishits a ball, he’s so fast that it’s a hit.”

Added an NL pitcher: “It’s one of those matters where you can’t fall into a pattern. Definitely not doubling up or tripling up on pitches, because then he’s seen the pitch. Kind of keeping him on his toes and keep him thinking up there is your best chance.”

Never, ever fall into a pattern.

“With him, you are mostly just trying to stay away from patterns — that’s the biggest thing,” said yet another NL pitcher. “You must move the ball up, down, in and out to just keep him off certain pitches.”

Even if you sequence perfectly, there are no guarantees. Just ask this NL pitcher who went out of his way to change Ohtani’s eye level during a lengthy at-bat. After burying pitches below the zone and off the plate on his way to filling the count, the pitcher tried to throw a high — like, really high — fastball past Ohtani.

Ohtani blasted it for one of his 54 home runs.

“We got to a 3-2 count, fastball at the top — well above the top — and he got me,” the pitcher said. “It was a pitch that not a lot of guys can do anything with, especially after the way we just worked him down and away — and pushed his eyes all the way down, all the way away, as much I could. I tried to go to the top, and he was able to get the barrel to it.”

Ohtani can tee off on any pitch type — just look at Baseball Savant’s run value metric. Ohtani had a +24 Run Value against four-seam fastballs this season. That’s the second-highest value by any hitter against any pitch type (Aaron Judge, +34 vs. four-seamers), but now look at Ohtani’s other run values: +17 vs. slider, +10 vs. sinker, +8 vs. changeup, +7 vs. curveball and +7 vs. splitter.

That’s a 7+ run value against six different pitches — the most in the Majors. No other NL hitter has a 7+ run value against more than three pitch types. Only a trio of elite AL hitters have a 7+ run value against five separate pitches: Judge, Bobby Witt Jr. and Juan Soto.

“Fastballs down and away, breaking balls off of it, two-seam fastballs in, changeups down,” said one NL pitcher. “The outer half’s pretty open, but don’t miss in. You’ll get hurt. Just [the] outer half.”

“When you look at his heat maps, there aren’t a ton of holes in his swing. He covers, obviously, the entire zone and he has slug throughout pretty much the entire zone,” said another NL pitcher. “So from my scouting, the best strategy available is to get below the zone with spin. He’s obviously very good at hitting pitches up — any sort of mistake.”

Knowing Ohtani doesn’t have many real weaknesses, some pitchers just opt to go strength vs. strength.

“I would say you’ve just got to challenge him and give him your best stuff,” said another NL pitcher. “Your only hope is that you can’t shy away from those guys. Go at them with your best stuff and hope for the best.”

That last response was another one that came up often. You make your pitch, and then …

“You just pray for the best,” said one NL catcher. “Pretty much, that’s the only hope you have.”

Added an AL pitcher: “If he puts a ball in play, you hope it stays in the yard. It’s a guessing game, and hopefully, you guess right.”

At the end of the day, there’s only so much you can do to try to stop Ohtani. There’s a reason that every one of his at-bats has become appointment viewing. And as much as you never want to see him step into the box as a pitcher, there’s still an admiration for what Ohtani is doing — even from some of the guys he’s doing it against.

“When I’m in competition mode, whoever’s in the box, whatever team we’re playing — I hate you,” said an NL pitcher. “I want to dominate you. We’re going to win this game. I don’t care what you do. After the game, you review everything that you did. You watch video.

“And that’s when it’s like, ‘That was a hell of a pitch I made, and he put an even better swing on it. Can’t do anything about it.’ You’ve got to tip the cap to the best player in the league.”