ANAHEIM — As Shohei Ohtani has torn through the first few weeks of his career, each swing and each pitch taking down more of his skeptics, one question has persisted.

What was up with spring training?

Ohtani’s performance in the spring was poor enough to create the narrative that he was – at best – not ready for the majors and – at worst – just not as good as his reputation. At one point, an anonymous scout was quoted saying that Ohtani looked like a high school hitter.

As he heads into the third start of his career as a pitcher, on Tuesday night at Angel Stadium, he’s seemingly put those ideas to rest. As a pitcher, he is 2-0 with a 2.08 ERA. As a hitter, he is batting .367 with three homers in his first 30 at-bats.

Given his early success, it’s natural to wonder just what changed so much in a few weeks.

Ask around the Angels clubhouse and you’ll get some shrugged shoulders and rolled eyes. The composite, paraphrased, response is: Who cares? Spring training doesn’t count.

Press the issue, and you don’t get much more.

“I have no idea,” pitching coach Charlie Nagy said. “I honestly can’t answer that question.”

Catcher Martín Maldonado said, for all the time he’s spent with Ohtani, the language barrier has kept him from truly understanding his mindset.

“It’s hard to tell, because you can’t talk to him much,” Maldonado said. “It’s hard to find out what was going through his mind in spring training.”

Ohtani also gives few clues, beyond saying he was just getting ready, and making adjustments. He also doesn’t seem inclined to analyze it too much.

“Maybe I just got better,” he said through his interpreter. “I grew as a player maybe.”

All of that aside, there are some tangible reasons that Ohtani’s results have been so much better since the season began.

He was adjusting to the ball and the mound: In Japan, the slope of the mound is slightly different than in the majors. The ball also has a different texture and the seams are different. Both of those were elements that Ohtani gradually became more accustomed to throughout the spring.

Pitching in Arizona is difficult: The air is thin and dry, which makes it tough to throw breaking balls.

“It’s impossible to throw a curveball and a split finger in Arizona,” Maldonado said. “I’ve been there for 14 years and I know it doesn’t do much.”

Sun-baked fields are also hard, meaning grounders shoot through the infield or bounce over the heads of infielders. Fly balls carry farther in the light air.

“You can feel good and throw well and give up 10 runs,” Nagy said. “It’s hard to gauge by results.”

He was unlucky: Ohtani pitched the equivalent of 13 innings in spring training, including the minor league, intrasquad and “B” games. Of the 30 balls in play against him, 16 went for hits. There were also a couple errors. Normally in the majors, about eight or nine balls would be hits out of every 30 in play.

The difference is partly that he gave up some well-placed bloopers and seeing-eye ground balls. Also, in only one of his games did he have a representative major league defense behind him.

Since the season began, his luck might have gone the other way. He’s given up three hits on 24 balls in play, less than half the normal ratio.

He was working on things: It is the ultimate explainer for all that goes wrong with any player in spring training. It’s easier to accept from a veteran who we perceive has earned the right to experiment in the spring, but in retrospect it seems clear Ohtani was more focused on preparing than performing.

Case in point: In Ohtani’s final start of the spring, his fastball velocity sometimes dipped as low as 89 mph. He also walked five hitters in 5-1/3 innings, after walking just three in his other outings combined.

Afterward, Ohtani said he was simply working on his splitter in that game, so he threw it far more often that he would normally. Because the splitter is mostly a swing-and-miss pitch, not a pitch in the strike zone, that would explain the walks and the fastballs that he took something off to get in the zone.

Clearly, throwing the splitter over and over in that final game worked. It’s been a devastating pitch in his first two games of the regular season.

“My last start in Arizona I was able to throw a lot of the splitter and work on and it get a good feel for it,” Ohtani said. “I think it just carried over to the season.”

There are few scouting reports in the spring: By all accounts, Ohtani is a student of the game, not just someone who relies solely on his physical tools.

In spring training, he had little information on the pitchers or hitters he was facing. Even veteran catcher René Rivera knew nothing about the hitters he and Ohtani tried to get out when he pitched against the Tijuana Toros.

There is not as much adrenaline in the spring: Even before Ohtani arrived for spring training, his former teammates in Japan suggested that he is the kind of player who rises to the occasion when the pressure is on.

“Once he’d get in a little trouble, you could see he’d give it his whole effort, and it wasn’t even fair,” reliever Chris Martin, his former teammate said.

That works on both sides of the ball. In the regular season, he’s so far batted 10 times with runners in scoring position, and he’s got two homers, a triple and two walks.

He made a significant alteration to his swing: Ohtani, like many Japanese hitters, brought a pronounced leg kick to the United States. As the spring went on, it became apparent to him and his coaches that he was having trouble timing pitches with that kick. Hitting coach Eric Hinske suggested he lose the leg kick, and keep his foot down.

In the final days before opening day, during the Angels’ exhibition games at Dodger Stadium, Ohtani told Hinske that he wanted “to see how far the ball goes in batting practice with his foot down,” Hinske said. “And he was hitting home runs all over in BP in L.A. After that, he said ‘I’m in.’”

The ability to so quickly implement such a significant swing change has left his teammates in awe.

“Guys will move their hands a quarter inch or a half an inch and feel completely uncomfortable,” Ian Kinsler said. “It’s been awesome to see.”

The fact that Ohtani has also done that while his hitting routine is interrupted for his pitching routine is nothing short of remarkable to Hinske.

“Very impressive,” he said. “Most hitters are in the cage every day, seven days a week, and he needs to take some time away… I think we’re lucky to be around him.”

UP NEXT

Angels (Shohei Ohtani, 2-0, 2.08) vs. Red Sox (David Price, 1-1, 2.40), Tuesday, 7 p.m., Fox Sports West, KLAA (830 AM)