Shohei Ohtani had an off night at the World Series but he still breaks baseball logic
The Dodgers star pitched in Game 3 just 18 hours after setting records with the bat,It’s a reminder of how he makes the miraculous seem mundaneEven Shohei Ohtani’s teammates struggle to find the right adjectives to describe him; ones that express how good he is while emphasizing how unlikely his existence is in the first place,After Monday’s Game 3, when Ohtani became the first player in postseason history to reach base nine times in a World Series game, Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman opted for “unicorn,” one of the more common Ohtani descriptors,Starting pitcher Blake Snell, meanwhile, put things simple and plain,“He’s going to do spectacular things all the time,” Snell said.
“And it’s just going to be normal for him.”Game 4 of the World Series, though, proved that even a spectacular unicorn can be fallible.On Tuesday, Ohtani allowed more than three runs in a start for the first time since August and didn’t record a hit in the Dodgers’ 6-2 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays to tie the series at two games apiece.That a pedestrian performance like this can surprise is further evidence of how Ohtani has completely reset the standards of what a professional baseball player can achieve.After Tuesday’s game, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts admitted that even he can get carried away.
“It’s part of being a fan and seeing great things from great players,” Roberts said.“So every time he steps up I expect great things to happen, and maybe unfairly.”Even in Wednesday’s loss, Ohtani’s six strikeouts gave him the record for most for any player in their first three postseason starts (25, surpassing James Paxton’s record of 20 in 2019).The 15 swings and misses he induced from Toronto hitters put his whiff rate – the percentage of pitches that opposing hitters swing and miss – at 42%, higher than any other starting pitcher in the 2025 postseason.And his outing came just 18 hours after he was the first player in 119 years to have four extra-base hits in a World Series game.
That, perhaps, is a reminder of just how special the 31-year-old is,When he signed with the Los Angeles Angels in 2018, his arrival was expected to generate a new generation of two-way players, who would excel as pitchers and batters,Instead, his phenomenal success has only highlighted the extreme challenges of staying healthy (Ohtani has missed two full pitching seasons with elbow injuries) and the mental preparation required to battle big league pitchers and hitters,As a result, Ohtani may have inadvertently killed the two-way player, at least while he is the standard bearer,“[Ohtani] came in and he’s like the Babe Ruth of hitting and pitching,” Kansas City Royals pitcher Michael Lorenzen – a former two-way player with seven career home runs – told the Athletic in August.
“How much value is there in someone who’s just above average at both? I think if that’s proven by someone that it’s really valuable, then a lot more people will do it.”But Ohtani should not be dismissed as a curve breaker because of his seemingly divine talent.Before he signed with the Angels, Ohtani told Sports Illustrated that the most mental stress he suffered was not from the pressure of starring at two positions, but from fans and pundits who believed that his insistence on hitting and pitching indicated he was either selfish or unserious.Even for those who think Ohtani’s legend is overblown, it’s hard to consider him unserious about anything: as an adolescent, he scarfed “dozens” of bowls of rice to try and add bulk to his lanky frame and created detailed life goals in spreadsheets.He is so meticulous about his sleep that he reportedly travels with his own mattress and pillow to ensure he gets his preferred 10 hours per night – and another two before gametime.
Asked how he felt about starting the next day after his historic Game 3 performance, Ohtani said simply, “I want to go to sleep as soon as possible,”Those small parts of the “routine” are among the most common ways his many admirers try to explain Ohtani’s greatness,Ex-Dodgers teammate Chris Taylor remembers Ohtani pausing minutes between individual sprints and practice swings to try and create game-like visualizations so he could improve his subsequent reps,When asked to explain Ohtani’s uniqueness to a casual observer, Roberts described Ohtani as two specialists rolled into one, able to summon the best from each side of himself,“[These are] crazy expectations, probably unattainable for any person,” Roberts said before Tuesday’s game.
“And then to kind of have the body and mind work together to perform at the highest level with all eyes on him,I just don’t think there’s a comparable if you’re talking about one human being,”Whether it’s his appeal as a two-way player or his mammoth home runs and scorching line drives, Ohtani has galvanized those who follow his career,His jersey was the best-selling across Major League Baseball for the third consecutive season and has spurred a noticeable uptick in Japanese tourism to Los Angeles,Another athlete who shone in multiple disciplines – NFL hall of famer and nine-year MLB veteran Deion Sanders – said it will be decades until another player like Ohtani arrives.
Until then, the world will need to work on some new words to bring Ohtani to life,After all, unicorns are not real, but Ohtani is,
Alan Turing institute launches new mission to protect UK from cyber-attacks
Britain’s leading AI institute has announced a new mission to help protect the nation from cyber-attacks on infrastructure, including energy, transport and utilities, after it was embroiled in allegations of toxic work culture and the chief executive resigned amid ministerial pressure.The Alan Turing Institute will “carry out a programme of science and innovation designed to protect the UK from hostile threats”, it announced on Tuesday as part of changes following the resignation last month of Jean Innes, its chief executive, after a staff revolt and government calls for a strategic overhaul of the state-funded body.The mission comes amid growing concern over Britain’s vulnerability to internet outages and cyber-attacks after this month’s incident affecting Amazon’s cloud computing globally and recent cyber-attacks crippling production at Jaguar Land Rover factories, and supply chains at Marks & Spencer and the Co-op.Blythe Crawford, the former commander of the UK’s air and space warfare centre , will report back next month on how the government-funded institute “can best support the scale of government AI ambitions in defence, national security and intelligence”.The chair, former Amazon UK boss Doug Gurr, said 78 different research projects at the 440-staff institute have been closed, spun out or completed because they do not align with the new direction
Tech chiefs tell Trump to call off troops – will Firefox go ‘full AI’?
Hello, and welcome to TechScape. I’m your host, Blake Montgomery, confounded by the ending of Bugonia and looking forward to seeing Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein.In this week’s newsletter: the head of Firefox talks AI-integrated browsers; the tech billionaires’ support of Trump and their successful request to defer national guard deployment to San Francisco; and the growing prevalence of face-scanning in online dating. Thank you for reading.Do you need an assistant for your online activities?Multiple major players in artificial intelligence are moving on from chatbots like ChatGPT and are now focusing their efforts on new browsers with deep AI integrations
Amazon confirms plans to lay off 14,000 corporate workers as part of wave of cuts
Amazon has confirmed plans to lay off 14,000 corporate workers, as part of a wave of cuts expected to hit tens of thousands of jobs.The Seattle-based retail giant, which is vying to reverse a pandemic hiring spree, is attempting to cut costs and slim down its huge operation. This summer, its CEO warned white-collar employees their jobs could be taken by artificial intelligence.Beth Galetti, a senior vice-president at Amazon, wrote in a memo to employees on Tuesday: “The reductions we’re sharing today are a continuation of … work to get even stronger by further reducing bureaucracy, removing layers, and shifting resources to ensure we’re investing in our biggest bets and what matters most to our customers’ current and future needs.”On Monday, Reuters and the Wall Street Journal reported that Amazon was poised to cut as many as 30,000 corporate jobs, citing unnamed sources familiar with the matter, as it tries to undo the vast recruitment drive it embarked on at the height of the coronavirus pandemic, which unleashed an extraordinary – but fleeting – surge in demand for online shopping
Elon Musk launches encyclopedia ‘fact-checked’ by AI and aligning with rightwing views
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‘A good moment in time for us’: Firefox head on AI browsers and what’s next for the web
Do you need an assistant for your online activities?Multiple major players in artificial intelligence are moving on from chatbots like ChatGPT and are now focusing their efforts on new browsers with deep AI integrations. Those could take the form of an agent that shops for you or an omnipresent chatbot that follows you around and summarizes what you’re seeing, looks up related stuff, or answers related questions.Last week alone, OpenAI released the ChatGPT Atlas browser, and Microsoft showed off Edge’s new Copilot Mode, both of which heavily feature chatbots. At the start of October, Perplexity made its Comet browser free. In mid-September, Google rolled out Chrome With Gemini, integrating its AI assistant with the most popular browser in the world
More than a million people every week show suicidal intent when chatting with ChatGPT, OpenAI estimates
More than a million ChatGPT users each week send messages that include “explicit indicators of potential suicidal planning or intent”, according to a blogpost published by OpenAI on Monday. The finding, part of an update on how the chatbot handles sensitive conversations, is one of the most direct statements from the artificial intelligence giant on the scale of how AI can exacerbate mental health issues.In addition to its estimates on suicidal ideations and related interactions, OpenAI also said that about 0.07% of users active in a given week – about 560,000 of its touted 800m weekly users – show “possible signs of mental health emergencies related to psychosis or mania”. The post cautioned that these conversations were difficult to detect or measure, and that this was an initial analysis
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