Bill me! Mets' scoreboard trolls Shohei
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Shohei Ohtani is no stranger to crushing baseballs. Now he's crushing scoreboards.
In his first plate appearance in Saturday night's 5-3 win over the Mets at Citi Field, he roped a double with an exit velocity of 109.6 mph. A few pitches before that, though, Ohtani nearly homered on a ball that curved just foul down the right-field line. Leaving his bat at 107.3 mph, the ball broke a panel on a scoreboard.
In Ohtani’s next plate appearance, the Mets let him know that a bill was on the way by posting "We're sending you the bill for that, Shohei" on the giant video board in center field.
The Mets still had their eye on Ohtani on Sunday, posting "Please don't break anything else, Shohei!" on the video board before his first-inning at-bat.
Given his prodigious power, it’s a shock that Ohtani doesn’t do this sort of thing more often. Ohtani entered Saturday’s slate of games with an MLB-leading 44 home runs, an MLB-high 68 barrels, 12 home runs traveling 440-plus feet and seven home runs leaving the bat at 115-plus mph.
In the future, hosting MLB stadiums might need to think about taking some extra precautions when Ohtani comes to town.