The return of Shohei Ohtani to two-way superstardom hasn’t left any doubt: Pitcher Ohtani is as nasty as ever … if not nastier.

He’s struck out 15 batters in 8 1/3 innings over his two most recent outings on the mound, and he has 32 K’s in 23 1/3 innings this season entering Wednesday’s start against the Rockies.

But there’s also no doubt about this: Ohtani in 2025 is not the same pitcher as before.

Ohtani as a pitcher for the Dodgers is much different than Ohtani as a pitcher for the Angels. Here are three things that stand out.

1) He’s letting his fastball rip

Ohtani has always thrown hard, but never this hard. And that’s even more noteworthy considering he is coming off major elbow surgery.

Ohtani’s four-seamer is averaging a career-high 98.2 mph — an increase of almost a tick and a half from where he was in 2023 (96.8 mph) and almost a full mph up from his previous career high of 97.3 mph in 2022. He’s top-five among starting pitchers this season in fastball velocity.

SP with highest 4-seam fastball velocity, 2025
Min. 100 fastballs thrown

• 1-T. Jacob Misiorowski: 99.3 mph
• 1-T. Hunter Greene: 99.3 mph
• 3. Joe Boyle: 98.8 mph
• 4. Chase Burns: 98.4 mph
• 5-T. Shohei Ohtani: 98.2 mph
• 5-T. Paul Skenes: 98.2 mph

And he’s bringing extreme velo a lot more consistently. With the Dodgers, Ohtani is throwing 63% of his heaters 98 mph or faster, 31% of them 99 mph or faster and 10% of them 100 mph or faster. He’s hitting all of those benchmarks basically twice as often in 2025 as he ever has in any other season. He’s even thrown the fastest pitch of his career this year, 101.7 mph on June 28 against the Royals, and struck out old friend Mike Trout with a 100.7 mph fastball in their showdown in his last start.

This is not what happened when Ohtani came back from his Tommy John surgery with the Angels. Before the surgery in 2018, Ohtani averaged 96.7 mph with his four-seamer. When he returned to the mound in 2020, he dipped to 93.8 mph. Ohtani built back up to 95.6 mph the next year, but overall it took him three seasons, until 2022, to return to his pre-Tommy John velo level.

Not so in 2025. This time, his fastball is somehow higher octane immediately. Maybe Ohtani’s new windup is helping him generate more velocity — he’s pitching out of a full windup for the first time at the Major League level. That’s something we haven’t seen from Ohtani since his early days in Japan with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters.

Whatever the reason for the extra juice, it’s allowing Ohtani to pump in heaters. His 45% four-seam fastball usage this season is way up from 2023, when he was only throwing fastballs a third of the time.

The jump in velo has also brought a jump in spin rate — Ohtani is averaging a career-high 2,435 rpm, the first time he’s ever had above-average spin on his four-seamer — and those two qualities together are translating to a lot of whiffs.

2) His splitter has changed … and all but disappeared

When Ohtani first came to the big leagues, his splitter was his best pitch. It might’ve been the best pitch in baseball, period.

In 2018, he racked up 35 strikeouts on splitters in 59 plate appearances, by far his most K’s on any pitch type as a rookie. Opposing hitters batted .036 against Ohtani’s splitter.

His next full season pitching in 2021, Ohtani had 78 K’s in 138 plate appearances decided by his splitter. Opposing hitters batted .086 against it.

Back then, Ohtani was throwing his splitter about 20% of the time. Now? He’s using it less than 4% of the time. And he’s only throwing it against lefties, when it used to be a wipeout pitch against both right-handed and left-handed hitters.

But why? Ohtani’s splitter still has all the qualities of a wipeout pitch, especially with his velo bounceback. His splitter is averaging 91 mph, the fastest of his career.

Part of it has to be command — Ohtani started having trouble commanding his splitter even in 2023, and his locations with the pitch are still inconsistent. That would explain the low usage, especially considering how many other nasty pitches Ohtani has in his arsenal.

The reason for the lefty-only approach might be what the Dodgers have done with Ohtani’s splitter movement: His splitter used to be all vertical drop, but now it’s getting tons of horizontal break. Ohtani is averaging over 14 inches of arm-side movement on his splitter, twice as much as he’s ever had in his career and almost triple the movement he had in his first few seasons.

That change is likely related to Ohtani throwing his splitter from a lower arm angle (35 degrees in 2025 compared to 41 degrees in 2023), bringing his release point more in line with his other pitches (Ohtani’s arm slot on his fastball is 34 degrees, and on his sweeper it’s 33 degrees). A more sidearm-style delivery tends to produce a more side-to-side movement direction.

Ohtani’s new horizontal break is great against lefties, because the splitter will fade away from them, but maybe not so much against righties, where it runs into their barrel. That would explain Ohtani throwing the splitter exclusively to lefties so far this year.

3) His slider is his nasty new out pitch

So what’s taken the place of Ohtani’s splitter? Interestingly, it’s his slider — a pitch he’s rarely ever thrown before.

Now, we’re not talking about Ohtani’s sweeper — the slower, side-to-side breaking pitch that had taken over as his No. 1 pitch in 2022 and 2023. No, we’re talking about his traditional slider — thrown harder, in the high 80s, with tighter break. Ohtani only started throwing that slider late in 2022, and he barely sprinkled it in in ’22 and ’23.

But in 2025 he’s throwing the slider 11% of the time. And it’s his new nastiest pitch. Ohtani has 10 K’s with his slider already, making it as big of a strikeout weapon as his fastball or sweeper.

Ohtani’s sweeper is still nasty (just look at the one that K’d Trout the other day). But his hard sliders are taking a lot of the pressure off that sweeper, especially against left-handed hitters.

For a right-handed pitcher like Ohtani, sweepers tend to be less effective against left-handed hitters for the same reason that a splitter is less effective against righties: It’s a horizontal-breaking pitch that moves into their barrel.

And Ohtani’s hard slider is sharp. Not only is it averaging 87.6 mph, it has a lot of depth — it gets about two inches more drop than an average slider.

Ohtani is generating a 57% whiff rate with his slider, enough for it to take the mantle of his top swing-and-miss pitch from his splitter.

Ohtani’s highest whiff rate pitch type by season

• 2018: Splitter — 56%
• 2021: Splitter — 49%
• 2022: Splitter — 50%
• 2023: Splitter — 44%
• 2025: Slider — 57%

Ohtani’s signature quality as a pitcher has always been the ability to adapt quickly, particularly by adding nasty new pitches on the fly. He’s done that previously with his cutter and sinker, and now he’s doing it with his hard slider with the Dodgers.