Shohei Ohtani vs. Sean Manaea NLCS matchup breakdown

Manaea is the Mets’ best starter, and he absolutely dismantled Ohtani in Game 2 of the NLCS. Manaea faced Ohtani three times. He struck out the Dodgers superstar twice, and got Ohtani to pop up weakly once.

Ohtani didn’t look a whole lot like a 50-home-run-hitting MVP candidate against Manaea. But he’s looked like it ever since, from his 115.9 mph moonshot over Citi Field’s right-field foul pole in Game 3, to his 117.8 mph leadoff rocket to start Game 4, to his multi-hit game in Game 5.

So what’s going to happen in Round 2 of the Ohtani vs. Manaea showdown? If the Mets are going to take this series to a winner-take-all Game 7, Manaea’s probably going to need to shut Ohtani down again. And if the Dodgers are going to book their trip to the World Series right here, it all starts with Ohtani at the top of their lineup.

Here are the three big things to watch for when Ohtani faces Manaea in Game 6.

1. Will Manaea stick with his sinker/sweeper mix?

A hallmark of the Mets’ starting rotation is the sinker/sweeper combo. Their top two starters this postseason, Manaea and Luis Severino, both rely heavily on those two pitches. Manaea, in fact, is throwing sinkers and sweepers more than any other starter in the 2024 playoffs.

SP with the highest combined sinker/sweeper usage
2024 postseason

1. Sean Manaea: 83% (56% sinkers, 27% sweepers)
2. Michael King: 54%
3. Alex Cobb: 50%
4. Luis Severino: 50% (24% sinkers, 26% sweepers)
5. Max Fried: 47%

It’s a side-to-side approach to attacking hitters — Manaea throws sinkers that run to his arm side, and big sweeping sliders that break horizontally in the opposite direction (rather than go up and down with four-seam fastballs and traditional down-breaking sliders). Those two pitches let him control both sides of the plate.

Manaea and Severino both changed their repertoire to emphasize the sinker and sweeper when they came to the Mets this season. In Manaea’s case, he increased his sinker usage from under 1% in 2023 with the Giants to almost 45% in 2024 with New York. He increased his sweeper usage from 12% to 19%. And he barely throws any four-seamers or traditional sliders anymore.

Cut to the postseason, and Manaea’s first game facing Ohtani in the NLCS. He threw Ohtani exclusively sinkers and sweepers — an effective pitch combo when you’re a sidearming lefty facing an elite lefty slugger.

Of Manaea’s 10 pitches to Ohtani, six were sinkers and four were sweepers. Manaea struck out Ohtani on sinkers in both of his first two plate appearances — the second one was a three-pitch K on all sinkers — and got him to pop up with a sweeper his third time up.

Ohtani, for his part, has crushed sinkers all season, both overall and against lefties in particular. Against lefty sinkers, including the postseason, Ohtani has a .333 batting average, .528 slugging percentage and 57% hard-hit rate. But he’s struggled against sweepers. Against lefty sweepers, he’s batting .091 with zero extra-base hits and a 35% swing-and-miss rate.

So what will he do if Manaea tries to attack him with those same two pitches again? Will Ohtani try to jump on a sinker, even though he couldn’t hit Manaea’s sinker in Game 2? Or what if Manaea changes up the way he attacks Ohtani in Game 6?

2. Can Ohtani handle Manaea’s new arm angle?

The big story behind Manaea’s resurgence down the stretch — a story that’s been heavily covered during the postseason — is how he lowered his arm slot to copycat Braves ace and NL Cy Young favorite Chris Sale, with incredible results.

Manaea’s delivery is now a sidearm, crossfire delivery just like Sale’s. You’ve probably seen how he warms up before games, standing on the left of the two bullpen mounds and pitching diagonally across to the home plate on the right.

And that delivery gave Ohtani fits in Game 2 of the NLCS. Manaea induced some of Ohtani’s ugliest swings of the playoffs — especially his first strikeout, on a 92 mph sinker that was over the plate, but which Ohtani waved at helplessly after it was already in the catcher’s mitt.

The other awkward swing was the sweeper Ohtani popped up in his last at-bat against Manaea, a one-handed flail against a breaking pitch off the plate.

In general, Ohtani just looked like he was having a hard time picking up Manaea’s sinker vs. his sweeper, and ended up unable to pull the trigger properly against either pitch. Manaea’s delivery was wreaking havoc with Ohtani’s swing decisions.

When you break down Manaea’s arm angle change this season, you can see why he might be causing so much trouble for Ohtani, out of all the pitchers on the Mets.

The dominant Sale start against the Mets that Manaea watched, which inspired him to emulate Sale’s delivery, was on July 25. In Manaea’s 20 starts before that date, his average arm angle was 26 degrees (zero degrees would be perfectly sidearm, and 90 degrees would be perfectly over the top). In Manaea’s 15 outings since then, including the postseason, his average arm angle is 17 degrees. (Sale’s average arm angle, for reference, is 11 degrees.)

Now, the sinker/sweeper combo is really what we care about here, because that’s what Manaea’s been relying on, and it’s how he got out Ohtani. Here’s how those two pitches have changed:

• Manaea’s sweeper arm angle: 29 degrees before July 25 … 22 degrees since
• Manaea’s sinker arm angle: 25 degrees before July 25 … 15 degrees since

That drop-down into the sidearm range could be what’s making Manaea such a problem for Ohtani. Ohtani crushes lefties with higher arm angles (three-quarters or over the top) — specifically arm angles over 25 degrees. But he struggles against lefties with lower, sidearm arm angles — specifically, arm angles below 25 degrees (admittedly in a much smaller sample).

Ohtani vs. LHP with arm angles >25 degrees
2024, including postseason (210 PA)

• .298 BA / .529 SLG / 10 HR / 23.8% strikeout rate
• .312 xBA / .580 xSLG / 95.1 mph avg. exit velo / 59% hard-hit rate

Ohtani vs. LHP with arm angles
2024, including postseason (39 PA)

• .206 BA / .441 SLG / 2 HR / 33.3% strikeout rate
• .181 xBA / .379 xSLG / 88.0 mph avg. exit velo / 38% hard-hit rate

So the change Manaea made — over 25 degrees to under 25 degrees — took him from Ohtani’s danger zone into Ohtani’s cold zone.

Of course, Ohtani has shown great ability to adapt over the course of his career, and learn to hit pitchers who once had his number. Maybe he can do it in a single series against Manaea.

3. How will Ohtani adjust to Manaea’s playoff strategy?

In his two strikeouts against Manaea, Ohtani looked very off-balance. On the first one especially, he looked like he was clearly expecting a sweeper on 2-2, but got a sinker, hence the extremely late, un-Ohtani-like swing. Something similar might have been going through his head on the second K, too, when Manaea surprised him with an 0-2 sinker in the zone and caught Ohtani looking at the third strike.

Why might Ohtani have been looking sweeper with two strikes?

Let’s call 0-2, 1-2 and 2-2 the “putaway counts,” where the pitcher has the advantage and is looking for the strikeout before the count runs full. Well, all season, the sweeper was Manaea’s putaway pitch against lefties.

Manaea in putaway counts vs. LHB, 2024 regular season

• 42% sweepers
• 35% sinkers
• 23% other (4-seamers, cutters, changeups, sliders)

So it would make sense for Ohtani to be looking for a sweeper. Except, in the playoffs, Manaea has flipped the script.

Manaea in putaway counts vs. LHB, 2024 postseason

• 65% sinkers
• 29% sweepers
• 7% changeups

The sweeper has not been Manaea’s putaway pitch vs. lefties this postseason. The sinker has. Ohtani wasn’t ready for it, and Manaea put him away with the sinker twice.

This is all part of the chess match between batter and pitcher. Ohtani surely knows how Manaea has changed his plan of attack this postseason. But Manaea surely knows Ohtani will be prepared to adjust in Game 6, and that Ohtani is an extremely dangerous hitter against sinkers. He caught Ohtani for one game, but he might not be able to do it again. That’s what will make their matchup so fun to watch on Sunday.