Shohei Ohtani vs. Yankees: The full confrontation could come in October

That was the subplot to the Yankees’ windswept 3-1 victory over the Los Angeles Angels on Sunday. The Angels held back Shohei Ohtani from starting, citing workload management and insisting it had nothing to do with a possible date in the American League wild-card game.

The teams do not meet again in the regular season, and the Yankees have now missed Ohtani the pitcher in both series they have played. On Sunday, he would have pitched against Masahiro Tanaka, another ace from Japan. Instead, he hit against him and continued his futility.

Ohtani was 0 for 11 with six strikeouts against Tanaka in Japan in 2013, the year he turned 19 as a rookie for the Nippon Ham Fighters. On Sunday, he wedged a walk between two more strikeouts. For the weekend, Ohtani went 0 for 9 in the Bronx.

“I don’t feel like I put too much pressure on myself any day, not just this time around,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “I didn’t get any hits this time, but I was able to draw some walks. I think that’s a positive thing to take out of this series.”

Ohtani walked four times in the series, in which the Angels lost two of three. They are 29-24, 3 1/2 games behind Seattle for the second American League wild-card spot. The Yankees have the top spot, at 33-16.

At .673, the Yankees hold the second-best winning percentage in the majors. The best belongs to the Boston Red Sox, who are 36-17 for a .679 mark. Teams do not pay much attention to standings this early, but in a few months, one of these two old rivals could face elimination in their very first postseason game.

Ohtani, with his 97 mph fastballs and baffling splitters and sliders, would be a devastating weapon to introduce in that setting. Forget this hitless weekend; the spotlight does not bother Ohtani. He lives with it every day.

“Nothing gets to him,” said Zack Cozart, the Angels’ third baseman. “When you’re coming over here and you have your name attached to guys like Babe Ruth, that’s a lot of pressure on the kid. He’s 23 years old, which makes what he’s doing even that much more impressive. Nothing seems to bother him. Really even keel, which I love.”

In his first seven years, with the Cincinnati Reds, Cozart played with Joey Votto, perhaps the best pure hitter in the game. Now he plays with Mike Trout, the best overall player. Ohtani belongs in their class.

“Everybody knows when there’s a difference between what 99 percent of the guys do, or the way Trout hits the ball or Shohei hits the ball,” Cozart said.

Ohtani is hitting .291 with six home runs, a .376 on-base percentage and a .553 slugging percentage. On the mound, he is 4-1 with a 3.35 earned run average in seven starts, with 52 strikeouts in 40 1/3 innings.

“It’s obviously tough just to do one thing, and he’s doing both exceptionally well,” Trout said. “It’s pretty remarkable, the workload he’s been doing so far.”

Part of that work was a mechanical adjustment to his swing late in spring training, when Ohtani scrapped a high leg kick so he would have more time to adjust to unfamiliar pitchers. His skill in doing so is a testament to his athleticism.

“He’s unbelievably gifted on the mound, but that adjustment he made as a hitter impressed me the most, going from the leg kick to, almost overnight, just putting his foot down and being really successful with it,” Cozart said. “People don’t realize how hard that is to do.”

To make it all work, the Angels have carefully spaced out Ohtani’s starts, trying to simulate his schedule in Japan — when he pitched once a week and teams play a 144-game schedule — and mindful of his light workload last season, when an ankle problem limited him to five starts. Their once-fragile rotation has responded well, with a 3.63 ERA before Sunday that ranked third in the AL, behind only Houston and Cleveland.

Ohtani has not thrown enough innings to qualify for the major league ERA title, but of the 91 pitchers who have, only two — the Yankees’ Luis Severino (97.6 mph) and the New York Mets’ Noah Syndergaard (97.4 mph) — have a harder average fastball than Ohtani’s 97.1, according to FanGraphs.

Tanaka’s average fastball is 91.1 mph, and before Sunday he threw it with just 27.4 percent of his pitches, the lowest percentage in the majors. In that way, Ohtani suggested, Tanaka is pitching even more in the Japanese style than he did in Japan.

“I felt like he threw more breaking balls this time around than when he was in Japan,” Ohtani said. “American pitchers throw mostly fastballs, but he kind of pitched me backwards, so that felt a little different.”

He added: “I don’t have the command that he does, so I consider myself and him completely different pitchers. But we do have a similar repertoire. Every pitch he has is really great, so I have been looking at his pitches and maybe it’s helping me.”

Ohtani does not hit on days he pitches, so he could have a different view of Tanaka in a few months. The Yankees have won all six of Tanaka’s career starts against the Angels, but none would have the tension of a knockout game against Ohtani in October.

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.