WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. – There were nerves, plenty of them, Shinnosuke Ogasawara admitted. And when the first major league batter he’d ever faced, Tyrone Taylor, ripped a ball to deep left-center, the Japanese left-hander held his breath for a moment as he waited to see where it would land.
Once Jacob Young tracked it down at the base of the wall, Ogasawara could breathe easy again. This was just another baseball game, ultimately an 11-6 drubbing of a split-squad Mets team, albeit one a continent away from every other baseball game he’d ever pitched.
And though his one-inning Nationals spring training debut included a healthy amount of loud contact, it nevertheless ended with a zero on the scoreboard and a wide smile on Ogasawara’s face.
“Of course the first hitter, he got good contact,” he said, via interpreter Jumpei Ohashi. “I was kind of nervous and upset, but after that it’s fine.”
Ogasawara’s first Grapefruit League outing lasted only eight pitches. The notorious strike-thrower lived up to that reputation, never reaching the fourth pitch to any of the four Mets batters he faced. He threw mostly fastballs, amped up a bit and reaching 92 mph, and never got to his slider before the inning was over.
The contact, admittedly, was loud. Taylor drove Ogasawara’s second pitch to the warning track in left-center. Francisco Alvarez ripped a line drive to center that was also caught by Young. Former Nat Jesse Winker ambushed a first-pitch fastball and smoked an opposite-field double. Only cleanup hitter Luis De Los Santos hit the ball on the ground, right to first baseman Nathaniel Lowe for the final out.
“We want him to treat every hitter as he did like he was in Japan,” manager Davey Martinez said. “It’s going to take some getting used to. I think the thing that we talk a lot with him right now is just understanding that he's really good about throwing the ball over the plate. So we don’t want him to shy away from that.”
Ogasawara loves to throw as much as possible. His bullpen sessions in Japan often surpassed the 50-pitch mark. He regularly threw 140 pitches in a start. So when he departed after only eight pitches this afternoon, you could only assume he would head down to the bullpen to get more work in. He actually didn’t, preferring to just let this outing speak for itself.
There’s only so much the Nationals can draw from this abbreviated performance. They need to see much more from Ogasawara over the next month before they can decide if he’s ready to open the season in a major league rotation or if he needs more time to adjust to the five-day routine at Triple-A.
For now, one scoreless inning on eight pitches sufficed. There will be more important innings thrown this spring and beyond. But there will never be another first inning as a big leaguer for this smiling 27-year-old.
Said Ogasawara: “This is my special day.”
* Mitchell Parker followed Ogasawara, and while he wasn’t quite as efficient as his fellow lefty, he was plenty effective in tossing a 1-2-3 inning on 14 pitches, inducing two grounders with a strikeout as well.
Parker, who appears to be competing with Ogasawara and DJ Herz for perhaps one available spot in the Opening Day rotation, said he treated this outing as if he was starting. He went through his typical pregame stretching and throwing routine, just delaying each step until Ogasawara completed his.
“Luckily it was early enough in the game where you can treat it like a start,” Parker said. “No stress with it.”
* The Nationals burst out the gates with five runs in the bottom of the first, knocking New York starter Ty Adcock from the game. The rally featured a plethora of quality at-bats, including three full-count walks (by Dylan Crews, Nathaniel Lowe and Riley Adams), three singles (by Josh Bell, Paul DeJong and Luis García Jr.), a sacrifice fly (by Stone Garrett) and a gift of a two-run error by Mets reliever T.J. Shook (who airmailed an underhand toss to first base after a routine comebacker to prolong the inning).
Lowe, making his Nats debut, enjoyed a particularly nice afternoon at the plate, drawing a pair of walks and then driving an RBI double to the wall in right-center.
“That’s really who he is,” Martinez said. “That’s what really we liked about him. He’s going to work good counts, he’s going to work good at-bats. He’ll take his walks. And then he drives the ball to right field.”
* The Nats are off Monday, and with heavy rain in the forecast, there won’t be much opportunity for anybody to get significant work achieved at the complex.
They return to game action Tuesday when they face the Marlins in Jupiter, with Trevor Williams on the mound. Herz will then start Wednesday’s home game against the Astros.