A’s Opening Night starter Kyle Muller was the Shohei Ohtani of Texas high school baseball

OAKLAND — Kyle Muller is cheerfully standing in front of his locker, doing his best to recount one of the most special moments of his young life and failing miserably to come up with the details.

The Athletics’ rookie left-hander remembers getting an e-mail from pitching coach Scott Emerson late last week requesting his presence along with manager Mark Kotsay and bullpen coach Mike McCarthy.

“I’ll be honest. I forgot the whole first half of it right up until the point where Kots said, `Do you think you can do that on Opening Day?,’ ” Muller said. “At that point I was locked in. I got up, hugged everybody. I was freaking out.”

If all goes according to plan, Muller, 25, will be an anchor on the A’s pitching staff. The choice of Kotsay to be the Opening Night starter Thursday (7 p.m.), Muller will face Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels.

Ohtani is coming off a dominant performance on the mound and at the plate, leading Japan to the World Baseball Classic championship against a stacked United States lineup.

It’s fitting in that Muller was essentially the Ohtani of Texas high school baseball in 2016 as both the state and national Gatorade Player of the Year for his work as a virtually unhittable pitcher and a slugging outfielder.

As a senior at Dallas Jesuit, Muller went 9-0 with a 0.42 earned run average, striking out 142 batters in 83 innings, setting a national record by striking out 24 consecutive hitters spread over two games. At the plate, Muller hit .396 with 15 home runs and 52 RBIs with eight doubles, five triples and 18 stolen bases in 40 games. Jesuit won the Texas Class 6A title.

A second-round draft pick by the Atlanta Braves, Muller signed a $2.5 million contract and bypassed a scholarship offer to Texas. Having worked his way up through the Braves minor league system, Muller was 3-5 in 11 starts with a 5.08 earned run average for Atlanta in 2021-22, splitting time between Triple-A Gwinnett and the big club.

Last December, Muller and Milwaukee’s Esteury Ruiz were the key names for the A’s in a three-team, nine-player trade that involved sending catcher Sean Murphy to Atlanta.

Muller was 1-3 with a 6.50 ERA in five games during spring training, but Cactus League stats are often inflated as pitchers work their way into shape and are focused on executing pitches rather than following detailed game plans.

Kotsay has no reservations about Muller, who still qualifies as a rookie.

“The way he takes the mound, his presence, his competitiveness, all those things kind of line up,” Kotsay said. “He deserved the opportunity to go out and take the ball on Opening Day. He’s part of our future, part of our present.”

Muller, 6-foot-7 and 250 pounds, has ascended steadily through the minors and pitched at every level in the Atlanta organization, from rookie ball up to Triple-A. He has a 35-27 record in six seasons with a 3.33 ERA and 652 strikeouts in 600 2/3 innings.

“You’re going to see someone that competes,” Muller said. “If I don’t have my stuff, you’re going to see me out there competing until Kots comes and takes the ball from me. I like to get after it out there. It’s not like I’m just happy to be here. I want to do well. I want to dominate. that’s going to be the mentality going into the season.”

It figures to be a more extended run than Muller got with the Braves, which is why he was elated when the deal went down in December sending him to the A’s.

Opening Day Muller takes the mound pic.twitter.com/lXQzAsJuMN

— Oakland A's (@Athletics) March 24, 2023

“I was excited, being able to come up to the big leagues and take my bumps and bruises and get better from them and not feel like I’m trying out every time I take the mound,” Muller said.

There was a familiar face for Muller in catcher Shea Langeliers, with the two playing together in the minors before Langeliers was dealt to the A’s before the 2022 season in the deal that sent Matt Olson to the Braves.

“I understand how he thinks so it’s been easy to get on the same page,” Langeliers said. “I’ve been impressed in the way he’s attacked the strike zone. He’s going to be fun to watch. When he’s on, it’s special.”

Brian Jones, Muller’s coach at Dallas Jesuit, runs a powerful program that routinely sends players to both pro ball and college ball. But during Muller’s senior year, the interest was extreme with 20 to 30 coaches and scouts positioned behind home plate with radar guns every game.

“I mean, when you step off the bunch and you’re 6-6 and 230, pitching like he does, running down balls in the outfield and hitting, you demand a certain level of respect,” Jones said. “At the same time, even though he had that presence, he didn’t make it about himself and he was a good teammate.”

Muller’s older brother Chris, who also played at Jesuit, is a right-hander in the Tampa Bay Rays organization after playing collegiately at Texas-San Antonio. Another high school teammate, Jacob Palisch, was a standout pitcher at Stanford, Texas A&M and now is in the minor league system of the Chicago White Sox.

Jones said Muller is a regular at Jesuit during the offseason, lifting weights and throwing.

“It was his senior year that his work ethic really kicked in,” Jones said. “I don’t have a lot of two-way guys at school, but he’s one of the best we’ve ever had.”

Having put hitting aside, Muller is focusing on the nuances of pitching.

“I used to just throw pitches to throw pitches — I’ve got two strikes so I’m going to throw a curve ball — but now it’s about understanding each pitch and understanding who I am as a pitcher,” Muller said.

As for his A’s debut on Opening Night, Muller sees the venerable Coliseum as something special in terms of history.

“Everyone else sees it as an old stadium, but you walk around out there and you know a lot of stuff has happened and it’s cool to be a part of it,” Muller said. “They’ll move out of here some day and I’ll get to say I pitched here.”