Shohei Ohtani homers TWICE 🤯 | 大谷翔平ハイライト

What a velocity! All I can do is lough.

He is dope!

hes farther

大谷選手が一番打者になると打率が下がりそうで怖い

Mr.June！大谷さん！

he’s a pitcher

跩哦

The sound, the direction, the distance, everything is unreal.

🥰

Regalaron sombreros?

https://youtu.be/xozvLfbOTHs?si=pe4s5ln95ZtcK1Eb😊

junetani poppin off

I wonder what his former interpreter thinks???

My dad and I were there, got it on video, awesome moment

many power hitters like him in Korea

Why do Shohei Ohtani's batted balls fly so far despite his seemingly light swing?

Ohtani's hitting form looks quite different from that of many other major leaguers who swing with the power of their upper arms. Ohtani's swing form is unique in that there is not much power in his upper arms or upper body.

The three characteristics of Shohei Ohtani's swing are what we see.

(1) Natural dynamic vision to see the movement of the ball,

(2) A stable and smooth swing trajectory that does not shake his body axis due to his overwhelming strength of his torso, lower body, legs, and hips,

(3) Instantly finds the best timing for hitting the ball and captures the timing with certainty.

These three things are performed with a big body that has been trained through diet and training for his past 10 years. As a result, he can hit a moving ball as far with a steady and efficient swing as if it were a driver shot of a stationary golf ball.

Shohei Ohtani's hitting style is characterized by his ability to instantly find the optimal sweet spot for a pitch coming into the hitting zone, and to ensure that he hits the ball just right.

His swing appears stable, smooth, and unshakeable, with no effort until the follow-through, when he captures the best timing to ensure that he hits the ball at the right moment.

Despite this, the ball flies a long way.

This is because the power generated by the swing trajectory is efficiently concentrated on a single point on the ball without waste and converted into the ball's flying power.

Shohei Ohtani is able to hit the ball this way, because, first, he has an unshakeable torso axis and strong legs and lower body, and second, he has good dynamic vision, which is the reason for his excellent pitch selection.（His good eye for the ball, which is the result of his natural dynamic vision.）

He trains not only his upper body but also his lower body intensively, so that his legs and back, core, and axis are stable when he swings, and his body does not shake with the force of the swing. This is due to the strength of his well-trained legs and back muscles.

If we compare Shohei Ohtani's swing with that of other sluggers, focusing on the relationship between the upper and lower body, we can see a significant difference during the swing.

Many players swing with their upper bodies with great force and hit the ball, but when they follow through, their lower bodies, which are supported by an open stride, are defeated by the rotational force of the swing of the upper body, which has a longer trajectory than the stride, and in many cases, their feet flop or their lower bodies are jolted by the swing power.

However, when looking at the follow-through of Shohei's swing after hitting a just-meet shot, the lower body hardly swings at all, and the body axis remains stable, smooth, and clean.

Naturally, like other hitters, Otani's upper arm movement should be greater and stronger than that of his lower body, but the overwhelming muscular strength of his lower body, including the length of his legs, absorbs and supports the impact of the swing trajectory of his upper body.

When we compare the upper and lower body movements, we see that his lower body strength overwhelmingly outweighs his upper body strength.

This is what seems to mechanically affect the distance of the ball when Ohtani hits it.

(Ohtani: lower body strength >= upper body swing, other hitters: upper body swing >= lower body)

In his case, being a pitcher from a young age may have contributed to the strength of his torso and legs and back.

To reduce the burden on their overworked arms and shoulders, pitchers intentionally focus on training to strengthen the lower body, including the legs and hips, which stabilize the trunk and axis.

In his case, more than 10 years of training as a pitcher since his boyhood may have formed his overwhelming core stability and leg and hip strength, and may have had a positive effect on his hitting form. If so, this may be the result of his pursuit of becoming both a pitcher and hitter at the same time, a dual way that is very difficult to achieve.

Another factor that may have contributed to his hitting is the way Japanese high school baseball education is conducted.

Japanese high school baseball hitting instruction often adopts the "meet hitting (Just meet timing)" method.

The bodies of Japanese high school students are often thin and without muscle strength, as they have not yet fully matured. In teaching these skinny and weak students to hit the ball, they often teach them to hit the ball at the best time, rather than hitting it with their upper arm strength. In other words, they teach them the "Just meet timing hitting" method, in which the ball is surely caught at the sweet spot and sent flying far away by its repulsive force.

This approach is similar to the swing theory of hitting long shots in golf.

In other words, this method has much in common with the theory of hitting the ball on the club's sweet spot and converting the acceleration of the club head into the force of the ball's flight with a stable swing trajectory that does not sway the axis.

In Japanese youth baseball, a coach often uses this phrase when coaching skinny, ineffective players,

"Don't swing hard for home runs. Aim for a single hit first, and think that a home run is an accidental extension of a single hit (when the conditions are right).

The important thing is to hit the ball with a high probability of catching the center of the ball and making sure you hit it."

Watch Shohei Ohtani's warm-up routine as he waits in the next batter's box. It shows what he thinks is important in hitting.

He doesn't swing the bat blindly, but watches the timing of the opposing pitcher's pitch as it comes to the batter in front of him each time. He then tests the best timing for his own bat swing in accordance with the opposing pitcher's pitch.

The next batter, Freddie Freeman, swings his bat without looking at the pitcher, trying to remember what his swing feels like. The way these two use their waiting time and actions in the next batter's box are contrastingly different.

Shohei's hitting technique seems to focus on matching the bat precisely at the best time without hesitation to the various pitches thrown by the pitcher.　That seems to be another secret of Shohei Ohtani's hitting.