Angels News: Jared Walsh’s Hilarious Reason for Not Wanting to Watch Shohei Ohtani’s Batting Practice
Shohei Ohtani #ShoheiOhtani
Jared Walsh jokingly says he doesn’t like to watch his Angels teammate Shohei Ohtani take batting practice because he’s so powerful it hurts Walsh’s feelings.
Angels two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani is the closest thing baseball has to Superman. He’s been MLB Network’s top player two years in a row on their Top 100 Right Now lists, he’s finished first and second in the American League MVP voting the last two years and fourth in the Cy Young voting last year, and he’s knocked 150 extra-base hits in the last two years, including 80 home runs.
The two-way superstardom is something we’ll likely never see again, but even if Ohtani was only a hitter, he’d be remarkable. His teammate Jared Walsh was on MLB Network on Wednesday, and host Harold Reynolds asked if Walsh has ever sat and watched and marveled at Ohtani’s power.
“Yeah, every day,” Walsh said. “I mean, he hit a ball at Tempe Diablo during BP, he, like, inside-outed it over the berm, over the tree in left-center where, if you’re a righty and you hit that ball, it’s crushed. He’s playing by different rules than most of us. I try not to watch his BP too much, it hurts my feelings.”
Ohtani heads into 2023 as the odds-on favorite to win the MVP Award for the second time; it took a historic 62-homer season from Aaron Judge to beat him out last year, and that probably won’t happen again. Ohtani was nearly as good offensively in 2022 as he was in his MVP year, and he was significantly better on the mound.
It’s not every day you get to see baseball history being made, but Ohtani is a player historians will talk about forever, and we’re seeing it unfold in front of our eyes. Hopefully Walsh can sneak a peek once in a while, too.