My latest for The Athletic crunches the numbers on the 15 hitters to make the move from Nippon Professional Baseball to the major leagues without prior experience in a western-hemisphere league and uses them to make projections, and set expectations, for what Shohei Ohtani’s performance at the plate in 2018. As you’ll see, I discovered a surprising consistency in the manner in which those hitters’ production translated to MLB. It will be interesting to see if Ohtani’s performance follows suit this season.
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