Shohei Ohtani is taking the world by storm. The Angels' phenom now leads MLB with 28 home runs and has a 3.60 ERA through 12 starts, a feat that can only be described as "Ruthian".
Ohtani's name is often mentioned alongside Babe Ruth, but you can add a third name to that mix: Bryce Harper. While Harper lacks the pitching element to his game (although he did take the mound in JUCO and threw 96 mph), his swing caught the attention of a younger Ohtani. A recent profile detailed how Ohtani studied Harper's swing and indirectly was studying the Great Bambino's swing:
When Ohtani was a boy in Iwate, he idolized Ichiro Suzuki and attempted to emulate him. When he joined the Nippon-Ham Fighters in 2013, he studied video of Bryce Harper, which indirectly meant he was studying the swing of Ruth, who had borrowed from Shoeless Joe Jackson and spurred the original launch-angle revolution. The connection between Ruth and Harper was drawn in 2013, when, according to the Washington Post, then-Nationals hitting coach Rick Schu studied footage of both players side by side. “Identical,” he told the newspaper.
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To watch Ohtani is to see the same foundation — the stiff front leg, the hands loading and the hips unwinding, the back foot lifting off the ground. He is not a perfect copy of Harper; during spring training in 2018, Ohtani visited Ichiro, who suggested he lose the big leg kick he developed in Japan. He replaced it with a simple toe tap.
Harper, like Ohtani, was also a sort of child-prodigy after gracing the cover of Sports Illustrated as a 16-year-old slugger. Both were the most hyped prospects in their countries and both made their professional debuts at 18 (Harper debuted in MLB at 19 after a short stint in the minors). Both resemble Ruth in different ways. Yet, Harper's similar swing might have been an anomaly. While Ohtani was studying film of Harper and Ichiro, Harper stumbled upon his swing through years of repetition according to the same Washington Post article from 2013:
Schu scanned through video and found film of Harper hitting. He arranged clips of Harper and Ruth side-by-side on the monitor and stopped at the moment each hitter’s bat connected with a pitch. In each still picture, he saw a stiff front leg, an uncoiling torso and a back foot lifting off the ground. “Wow,” he thought. “That’s identical.”
“They’ve got that exact same swing at contact point,” Schu said later…
“The full thing is God-given,” Harper said. “I don’t know how I got my swing or what I did. I know I worked every single day. I know I did as much as I could with my dad. But I never really looked at anything mechanical. There was nothing really like, ‘Oh, put your hands here.’ It was, ‘Where are you comfortable? You’re comfortable here, hit from there.’ ”
It's not unusual for players to study the great swings of the game, yet it's high praise that Ohtani took to studying Harper from across the pond.
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