Giants Pitcher Had Such a Fired-Up Reaction to Striking Out Shohei Ohtani

Talk about an enthusiastic fist pump.

Screengrab on Twitter/ @MLB

When San Francisco Giants pitcher Spencer Bivens took the mound against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Sunday in his first Major League start, he probably didn’t think he would make one of the MLB’s most talented sluggers swing at air.

In the Giants’ 10-4 win over the Dodgers, Bivens allowed just one run to the league’s highest-scoring team through a career-best five innings of work. Perhaps the most impressive moment of his afternoon was the way the 30-year-old reliever battled against Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani—and won. 

In the top of the fifth inning, Bivens got Ohtani to strike out on a sweeper and immediately pumped his fist in the air to celebrate the sweet victory. He then walked off the mound, cool as can be.

You'd react like this too if you struck out Shohei Ohtani twice in a game 😤 pic.twitter.com/Mi8VK4j1eL

— MLB (@MLB) June 30, 2024

It was Bivens’s 60th and final pitch as his day ended with animated cheering and applause at Oracle Park. 

Ohtani entered Sunday hitting .419 with nine homers in his last 12 games and a league-best 26 homers on the year. The Dodgers superstar would nonetheless go 0-for-3 with two strikeouts against Bivens, who had struck out Ohtani with a four-seam fastball in the third before his epic fifth-inning performance.