Justin Verlander needed all his wiles to strike out Shohei Ohtani

Rookie hitters are supposed to be easy to get out. They're young! They're inexperienced! They don't yet know how to file their taxes or prepare for the nuances of pitch sequencing.

Shohei Ohtani , the amazing two-way player that is literally breaking every baseball mold ever created, is a rookie in name only, though. So, when Justin Verlander had him in a 2-2 count in the bottom of the sixth inning on Wednesday night, the Astros starter needed to reach into his bag of tricks to figure out what to throw.

He shook off catcher Brian McCann a few times and then sighed heavily as Ohtani stepped out of the box. What was he to throw to the powerful slugger? He had K'd him with a curve earlier in the game, so ... how about a fastball up and out of the zone?

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Yeah, that'll work.

Verlander talked about his approach against the star after the game. "That particular at-bat I felt like I got him going pretty good. He was expanding the zone. He was trying to catch up to the fastball. I think he was very aware of my fastball in and that's what the back-and-forth between Brian [McCann] and myself was, when we shook off so many times. It was what pitch to execute."

After Ohtani stepped back in the box, "I just kinda threw it up and away and let it sail off the plate," Verlander said. "It's hard with a guy like Ohtani because the league doesn't know him yet. In an age of numbers and analytics and all that, there's nothing out there on him. He doesn't have a lot of at-bats yet, so you gotta go by feel."

"That's what my gameplan going into tonight against Ohtani was: I was going to pitch to my strengths and adjust accordingly with what I saw," Verlander added. "And I saw success."

Verlander used a similar pitch to strikeout Ohtani again in the ninth inning, which was the 2,500th punchout of the right-hander's career.