In 2014 Ohtani did something no one in Japanese pro baseball had done. In 2015 the bat went quiet

Ohtani's second season in Nippon-Ham's system was the one that turned the two-way plan into a record. In 2014 he went 11-4 with a 2.61 ERA in 24 games, with two shutouts and 179 strikeouts in 155 1/3 innings. As a hitter he played 87 games and batted .274 with 10 home runs and 31 RBIs. Baseball Channel wrote that no player in Japanese pro baseball had ever reached double digits in both wins and home runs in the same season, and that even counting the majors, only Babe Ruth had done it before.

The same Baseball Channel piece noted that he did not reach the qualifying number of plate appearances, and that he mostly kept to a starter's schedule of six days between starts. That was the tradeoff the club had accepted. He finished third in the Pacific League MVP vote, according to Baseball-Reference's Bullpen.

In 2015 the balance tipped toward the mound. Ohtani went 15-5 with a 2.24 ERA, 196 strikeouts and 160 2/3 innings in 22 games, and he made the Best Nine as the league's top pitcher. His 15 wins tied Hideaki Wakui of the Chiba Lotte Marines for the league lead. In a December 2015 column for Baseball Channel, the records writer Kou Hiroo compared the two and found them very different: Ohtani struck out about 11 batters per nine innings, held opponents to a .180 batting average and got the second-lowest run support in the league. At the plate, though, he hit .202 with 5 home runs and 17 RBIs in 70 games.

Put together, the two years showed what critics and supporters were both watching. The pitcher was becoming one of the best in Japan. The hitter had good seasons and bad ones. 2016, covered next in this series, was the year both worked at once.