Shohei Ohtani is the first player to meet our carded criteria for both pitchers (20 IP) and hitters (30 AB+BB as a non-pitcher) in over a decade. When Brooks Kieschnick pulled this off in the 2003 & 2004 MLB seasons he was mostly a nuisance given his minimal impact as a player, so while we passed a rule to govern what was necessary for player retention no further effort was expended on to how to handle two-way players in the game.
The IBL follows MLB rules governing the designated hitter, this post isn’t going to go into detail about those rules other than to point out that if Ohtani is your starting pitcher and you want him to bat using MLB rules he must be in the batting lineup as the pitcher (i.e. no DH). Rather, the purpose of this post is to explain how to deal with a unique game-play issue presented by Ohtani — handling injuries.
Ohtani was unable to pitch for extended periods of the 2018 MLB season due to arm/elbow issues, however these injuries did not have the same impact on his availability as a hitter. In order to simulate this properly it was necessary to treat Ohtani the pitcher and Ohtani the batter as separate players with respect to injury/durability ratings. So… how should injury rolls for Ohtani be handled?
In general, injuries suffered by Ohtani should be rolled using the ratings on his batter card. Any injury resulting from his batter card ratings that requires him to miss games means he is unable to play in any capacity. Any injury that prevents him from playing the field (e.g. may only pinch-hit or pinch-run) also prevents him from pitching.
The injury ratings on Ohtani’s pitcher card are reserved specifically for wild plays that affect a pitcher’s throwing arm (e.g. !000-199 empty/on-base, !385-440 empty, !460-515 on-base, etc). If Ohtani suffers an arm injury, determine the length using the pitcher card ratings. He will be unable to pitch for the duration of the injury. Additionally, apply the same result (minor, extended, 50%, 100%) to his batter card ratings to determine how many days Ohtani will be unable to hit. He will be considered day-to-day (DTD) at the point when the injury of shortest duration concludes.
Ohtani arm trouble example (2019 card):
two-die roll is: 47
pitcher card: 3 durability, result is 100% = 115 injury days; batter card: 100% = 28 injury days
Ohtani is unable to play at all for 28 days. After he passes his DTD roll he may hit. He will be unable to pitch for 115 days.
These guidelines should cover the vast majority of situations, but it’s entirely possible that there are circumstances I have not considered where it is unclear how things should be resolved. If/when these situations come up I’ll edit this post or add the relevant link via comment below.
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