Shohei Ohtani only few feet short of hitting for historic cycle - ESPN

ANAHEIM, Calif. — On what was in many ways a difficult afternoon, Shohei Ohtani still came strikingly close to accomplishing something unprecedented.

He missed by only a few feet.

Ohtani came to bat in Thursday's eighth inning with a chance to become the first player in baseball history to hit for the cycle while also serving as that game's starting pitcher. He then drove the first pitch he saw into deep center field, bringing a sparse Angel Stadium crowd to its feet — but Oakland Athletics center fielder Esteury Ruiz caught it right before crashing into the fence. It was a 389-foot out.

«It was off the end,» Ohtani said through an interpreter, «so I knew it wasn't gone off the bat.»

But Ohtani was noticeably frustrated as he returned to the dugout in the late stages of the Los Angeles Angels' eventual 8-7 victory. After reaching on a broken-bat infield single in the first, lining an opposite-field double in the third and turning a fly ball off the right-field fence into a triple in the sixth, Ohtani faced lefty reliever Richard Lovelady in the bottom of the eighth and sought a slider. He got it on the first pitch, on the inner half of home plate, but rotated his hips a little too aggressively and didn't catch it directly on the heart of his bat's barrel.

«It didn't sound perfect off the bat,» Angels catcher Chad Wallach said. «I thought it might still go.»

Ohtani, with a .278/.343/.526 slash line as a hitter this season, entered Thursday having allowed only two runs through his first 28 innings on the mound in 2023. Opponents were batting only .092 against him. He then retired the first nine hitters in order, striking out five of them. The fourth inning, however, saw Ohtani expend 36 pitches and cough up a five-run