One of the biggest storylines in baseball in 2025 was Shohei Ohtani's return as a pitcher.
And what a return it was -- from the two-way superstar topping 100 mph in his Dodgers pitching debut to his electric playoff gem against the Brewers, when Ohtani sent Los Angeles to the World Series with maybe the greatest single-game performance in baseball history.
In honor of today's "Shohei Day" on MLB Network, let's revisit Ohtani's season on the mound as we look forward to Ohtani's first full season pitching in a Dodgers uniform in 2026.
Here are five highlights of Ohtani's first pitching season in L.A.
1) He threw harder than ever
Maybe the craziest thing about Ohtani as a pitcher in 2025 was that, somehow, after his second major elbow surgery, he came back throwing harder.
You might expect a pitcher in his shoes to experience a dip in velocity, especially in his first season back. Just maintaining his old velocity would have been a big win. But adding velocity? No one could've expected that.
Ohtani's fastball velo actually reached a career high in 2025 -- both his average velocity, 98.4 mph, and his max velocity, 101.7 mph. At 98.4 mph, his four-seamer was over 1 1/2 mph harder than it was in 2023, before his arm injury, and it was top-five among starting pitchers.
SP with highest avg. 4-seam fastball velocity, 2025
- 1. Hunter Greene: 99.5 mph
- 2. Jacob Misiorowski: 99.2 mph
- 3. Bubba Chandler: 99.0 mph
- 4. Joe Boyle: 98.6 mph
- 5-T. Shohei Ohtani: 98.4 mph
- 5-T. Chase Burns: 98.4 mph
Ohtani also reached the 100 mph mark in 2025 more often than he ever had before: 49 times across the regular season and postseason. Over one out of every 10 heaters he threw reached triple digits.
But it wasn't just his fastball. Ohtani set new career highs in average velocity on all of his secondary pitches, too. That means sharper sweepers, sliders, splitters and curveballs.
In other words, Ohtani's stuff entering 2026 might be nastier than ever, across the board. As if he wasn't nasty enough before.
2) His strikeout-to-walk numbers were ridiculous
Ohtani has always racked up tons of strikeouts, because he's always had some of the most electric stuff in the Majors. That didn't change in 2025.
But what did change was that Ohtani was able to maintain his sky-high strikeout rates while also significantly cutting down on the walks he issued. Even though he only made 14 starts and threw 47 innings, that's still very impressive heading into 2026.
Ohtani's 33.0% strikeout rate last season was just behind his career high as a pitcher, the 33.2% mark that he posted in his best season, 2022, when he finished with 219 K's. Meanwhile, his 4.3% walk rate was a career low, ahead of the 6.7% mark he posted in '22.
Combine those and you get a sensational 6.89 strikeout-to-walk ratio for Ohtani, which was second-best among all pitchers who made at least 10 starts behind only Cy Young Award winner Tarik Skubal (7.30).
The difference between Ohtani's strikeout rate and walk rate was 28.2 percentage points, the second-biggest difference among that same group of starters behind only the Royals' Cole Ragans (30.4 points).
Those type of rate stats indicate that if Ohtani can make a full season's worth of starts for the Dodgers in 2026, he'll be set up to smash the 200-strikeout mark again.
3) He added a nasty new slider
One of the things Ohtani does best is add nasty new pitches at seemingly a moment's notice.
He did it multiple times before 2025 with his cutter (added 2021) and sinker (added 2022). And he did it in 2025 with a new hard slider.
Ohtani's No. 1 pitch in the seasons before his elbow surgery was his sweeper -- the slower variant of a slider which gets a large amount of horizontal movement -- as opposed to a traditional slider, which is harder with tighter and more vertical break. That sweeper was as good as ever in 2025. But on top of that sweeper, Ohtani also started throwing a sharper traditional slider last season.
The new Ohtani slider sits in the upper 80s and only breaks a few inches -- and it immediately became one of Ohtani's best swing-and-miss pitches. Ohtani generated a 44% whiff rate on that new slider last season, collected 15 strikeouts in 27 plate appearances decided by it, held hitters to a .154 batting average against it and didn't allow a single extra-base hit.
Ohtani has one of the most diverse pitch arsenals in the Majors, and everything he throws is really, really good, even the new stuff.
4) He brought his splitter back just in time for the playoffs
The sweeper wasn't always Ohtani's signature pitch, though. When he first arrived in the Majors, it was his splitter.
Ohtani's splitter had a stretch where it was maybe the most unhittable pitch in all of baseball. But he had all but stopped throwing it in recent seasons, mainly due to a lack of command.
That all changed in the 2025 postseason. Ohtani brought his splitter back for the most important games of the year. And it looked like the dominant Ohtani splitter of old.
Ohtani used the splitter to strike out Bryce Harper and Kyle Schwarber, the Phillies' best hitters, in the NLDS. And then he used it to record the final five strikeouts of his masterful start against the Brewers in the NLCS.
If Ohtani can command his splitter during the 2026 season like he did last October, watch out. That would mean one of MLB's nastiest pitches is back, on top of everything else Ohtani can throw at you.
5) He showed us a new windup
Pitchers' mechanical adjustments are often subtle, but Ohtani made one big obvious one as he came back in 2025: He added a full windup.
Ohtani had never used a full windup in his Major League career. He'd always pitched out of the stretch, even with the bases empty. The last time he'd used a full windup was early in his professional career in Japan.
But in 2025, he brought a new-look delivery to the Dodgers. And the new windup worked.
On a per-pitch basis, Ohtani was a better pitcher with the bases empty in 2025 -- that is, when he was pitching out of the full windup -- than he was in any previous season of his MLB career.
We're measuring that with Statcast's pitching run value stat, which takes the result of every pitch a pitcher throws and measures the total impact in terms of runs prevented.
Ohtani's pitching run value with the bases empty in 2025 was +1.6 runs prevented per 100 pitches thrown, a personal best. And he generated almost as much total pitching value with the bases empty in half a season in 2025, +11 runs prevented, as he did in his best full season in 2022, +14 runs prevented.
Ohtani is always evolving as a pitcher, so he'll probably have another new trick up his sleeve this year, too.