What if the unprecedented, unfathomable, unimaginable achievement of 50-50 is just the beginning? What if this colossal wonder Shohei Ohtani has put before us is only the appetizer? What if this is only the first line of Book 1 of a baseball epic?
Tell me, O Muse, of the man of many ways...
True it may be. We should not be surprised that Ohtani, with his amazement counter having clicked to 53-55 with six games left, is headed for bigger and better. It starts with his first-ever MLB playoff opportunity. It continues with his return to the pitching mound next season, when he resumes contending for the Cy Young Award and the home run title.
(Please read that sentence again. Slowly. Never get used to the enormity of that duality. And no, don’t expect him to pitch this postseason. Put him in the highest leverage atmosphere 12 months after a second elbow surgery and with nine years left on his contract? One source familiar with the front office’s thinking said there is a 99.9% chance Ohtani does not pitch in the postseason … although it is Ohtani.)
This season may be only the beginning of Ohtani redefining what is possible, just as it was for Babe Ruth in 1919.
Ruth hit 29 home runs in 1919, breaking the record of 27 by Ned Williamson that had stood for 35 years. Some baseball critics contended he had pushed the limits of what was possible. The next year he hit 54, whereupon umpire Billy Evans, a future Hall of Famer, wrote an op-ed arguing the breaking of that record “is well nigh impossible … I don’t believe he will ever smash it.”
The next year Ruth hit 59. Six years after that: 60. Ruth was 32 years old when he hit 60. Ohtani turned 30 this year.
Ruth’s 29-homer season in 1919, jaw-dropping as it was, merely was the appetizer. The main course was the greatest 12-season prime ever in which Ruth averaged 47 homers, 138 RBI and a .357 batting average and became one of the most famous persons on the planet.
Those who know Ohtani best advise you that 50-50 is not a culmination but a beginning. This era of baseball is just opening for Ohtani’s ownership.
“I feel like we’re just getting started,” says his long-time agent, Nez Balelo. “Think about some of the accomplishments he’s already reached. And only now has he finally gotten on the big stage with a very supportive team and a good group of players that support him and he supports them. And the result is he is having this historical year. So why wouldn’t we think we are only at the beginning?
“I’ve been on this idea since Day 1. The last six years were all about an introduction. He’s finally got this opportunity on the big stage, and he’s embraced it. He’s fought off everything that could be thrown his way.
“He’s only now on the global stage. We’re just getting started here. We’re in early chapters.”
Ohtani waited seven years to play on a winning team and in a pennant race. When it finally happened, he immediately became the first player ever with nine homers and 12 stolen bases in September—with a week still to go.
Hideki Kuriyama also knows Ohtani better than most. He is the man who made possible the unique greatness of Ohtani. As Ohtani was graduating from high school, he seemed so likely to sign with a major league organization (the Dodgers, Rangers and Red Sox were among the serious bidders) that some observers thought a Nippon Pro Baseball team would be wasting a top draft pick on him. Kuriyama was the manager of the Nippon Ham Fighters. He knew a major league organization was likely to develop Ohtani as either a pitcher or a hitter.
Kuriyama challenged him to take a path where no one tread: Sign with the Fighters to pitch and hit—to be a master of nitoryu, the two-sword fighting style. Once he established himself as a two-way player, Kuriyama told Ohtani, he could jump to MLB with both disciplines as a condition of his signing.
Ohtani signed on to the dream. Kuriyama managed him for five years before Ohtani signed with the Los Angeles Angels. Kuriyama also managed him in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. Like Balelo, Kuriyama believes Ohtani is only just getting started.
“The numbers are incredible, but the ceiling I see for him is much higher,” Kuriyama told The Japan Times. “He makes a lot of mistakes at the plate. Honestly, I think he has the ability to hit around 80 home runs.”
Eighty? Whoa.
But then, Ohtani is incomparable. His horizons extend beyond all others. And when you think about his path to 50-50, why wouldn’t this be only the start of more unique greatness? Here are the key parts of his journey and those that lie ahead:
'Victim A'
That’s how Ohtani was identified in court proceedings after federal authorities charged his longtime friend and interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, with stealing more than $16 million from him to cover gambling debts. The story broke just as Ohtani’s season began after signing his record 10-year, $700-million contract with the Dodgers. Ohtani was exonerated of any wrongdoing or knowledge of the scheme. Mizuhara pled guilty two months later.
Plenty of big-time free agents struggle with new teams and the pressure that comes with expectations, especially in a major market. Layer on top of that a federal investigation into your “de facto manager,” as the feds referred to Mizuhara? That’s a slow start waiting to happen.
Instead, Ohtani in April slashed .336/.399./.618. By hits, total bases and OBP, it was his best April ever.
Increased Strength
Ohtani has the long, limber levers of a Michael Phelps. Indeed, he was a competitive swimmer from kindergarten through fifth grade. He is hyper-flexible at the elbow and shoulder joints. Signed by the Angels at around 210 pounds, Ohtani has added more than 20 pounds without losing athleticism or flexibility.
“It’s the one comment I get the most,” Balelo says. “If I heard it once I heard it a thousand times: ‘He’s much bigger in person.’ He’s a beast.”
Ohtani in 2021 set a personal high in average exit velocity (93.6 mph), broke it in 2023 (94.4) and broke it again this year (95.6). There is a pattern here.
And how’s this for an outlier of Ruthian proportions? Ohtani leads the majors with nine home runs of at least 450 feet. That’s more than every team except the Colorado Rockies, who benefit from added distance from playing home games a mile high.
Dodger Resources on Offense
Ohtani enjoyed a major upgrade in player resources moving from the Angels to the Dodgers. That’s no knock on the Angels. No team has greater depth of staff, technology, analytics and systems than the Dodgers. As one veteran pitcher put it just days after joining the Dodgers: “Now I feel like I’m in the major leagues.”
Take defensive positioning, for instance. Here are the Dodgers’ MLB ranks since 2019 in defensive efficiency, a measurement of turning batted ball into outs: 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2. No team comes close to matching that wizardry.
This year Ohtani’s baserunning has benefited from the wisdom of veteran base coaches Dino Ebel and Clayton McCullough and the video scouting of the analytics department. Ohtani has the second highest stolen base percentage among players with 50 stolen bases (93.2%, trailing only Max Carey’s 96.2% from 102 years ago). He is 55-for-59, including 32 in a row since July 23.
Yes, rule changes have helped increase the stolen base success rate, but nobody else is stealing bases with the same efficiency as Ohtani. Being limited to DH also allows Ohtani to focus more on finding opportunities to run, such as uncovering tells from pitchers.
“He's clearly done a lot of research,” Kuriyama told The Japan Times. “I think he watches the pitchers closely, noticing even the slightest shift in weight that indicates a throw to home. This year, even though he hasn't been able to pitch, it seems like he's enjoying that aspect of the game.”
Dodger Resources on the Mound
Maybe you forgot: Ohtani is also one of the best starting pitchers in the game. Among pitchers who have started 86 games, Ohtani ranks second in strikeout rate (11.4, just behind teammate Tyler Glasnow), fifth in winning percentage (.667, even more remarkable because he has never pitched for a winning team) and sixth in ERA (3.01). That’s all time.
Over the course of his career, Ohtani (3.01 ERA, 11.4 K/9) is a combination of Chris Sale (3.04, 11.1) and Juan Soto (160 OPS+ vs. Ohtani’s 155) in the same player.
His pure stuff is filthy. From 2022–23, his sweeper was the single toughest pitch to hit in MLB (.157; minimum 1,700 pitches). He also averaged 97.0 mph with his four-seamer. Only six starters threw harder.
With that foundation of pitches, Dodger know-how, Dodger defensive efficiency (from 2018–23 the Angels ranked 13, 9, 14, 29, 6 and 24) and the way the Dodgers emphasize recovery, Ohtani may be even more dominant on the mound next year.
Their first order of business should be to do something about Ohtani’s cutter. He started throwing it in 2021. When he does throw it, he does hitters a favor. It is his worst pitch. He throws it 11% of the time, which is too often for a pitch that gets hit (.288 with .509 slugging). Los Angeles should take it away and commit more to his slider or find a way to reshape that pitch.
Closing Holes
Ohtani had so much raw power on elevated pitches and so much less on pitches low in the zone that for the first half of the season Dodgers manager Dave Roberts encouraged him not to swing at low strikes. Through his first 73 games, Ohtani hit only one home run on any pitch in the bottom rail of the strike zone.
But then Ohtani, who hits from an upright posture with his hands high, which can make covering low pitches difficult, simply closed that hole in his game. In 83 games since then, Ohtani has hit nine homers in the bottom rail, including a splitter Sunday for a game-tying, ninth-inning blast.
SHOHEI TIES IT, MOOKIE ENDS IT! pic.twitter.com/41S4RcXCru
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) September 22, 2024
Wait. That’s not all in terms of his huge improvement this year:
Ohtani vs. Secondary Pitches
*95 points better than anybody in baseball.
Ohtani HRs on Sliders
*Six more than anybody in baseball.
Leading Off
Ohtani began the season hitting second but in mid-June, the injury to Mookie Betts moved Ohtani into the leadoff spot. There he should stay.
Ohtani is the greatest slugger ever in the leadoff spot. Among players who hit most of a season there, his .671 slugging percentage batting first blows away the previous mark of .644 by Betts in 2018. His leadoff OPS of 1.050 is the greatest ever, topping the previous mark of 1.037 by Paul Molitor in 1987.
In 84 games leading off, Ohtani has hit 34 homers and stolen 40 bases—a 30-30 year inside virtually half a season.
Biggest Room for Improvement
Ohtani chases too much for a great hitter, which is probably what Kuriyama was referring to when he mentioned his “mistakes at the plate.” Ohtani has been right around the major league average in chase rate (28%). With Betts behind him, Ohtani this year has seen a 2.5% increase on pitches in the zone. That helps. But if Ohtani can cut his chase rate even by 3%, his OPS will go up further.
The Postseason
Do you have doubts? Did you watch the WBC? Did you hear about how Ohtani gave a stirring locker room speech before the final about not being intimidated by the stars on Team USA? Did you watch him strike out Mike Trout for the final out with the nastiest sweeper of his life after running down to the bullpen in between at-bats to prepare to close the game?
Did you know what Ohtani did in the 2016 postseason in Japan? How he put the Fighters in the Japan Series by switching from DH to the mound to close the playoff clincher? How he won Game 3 of the Japan Series with a walkoff hit just as the Fighters were in danger of falling behind three games to none? (They won the series.)
Are you watching what he is doing in the first meaningful September of his MLB career? Ohtani is slashing.354/.424/.756 this month—by far the best September of his career.
And now, after all that—Victim A, the seven hundred million, the Dodger spotlight—you’re going to wonder how Ohtani is going to handle postseason pressure?
“There were some people that wondered how he was going to handle the Dodger stage, playing in front of 40,000 to 50,000 people a night,” Balelo says. “So, bring on the critics. He signed the biggest free-agent contract in sports history and with that comes pressure. And he’s handled it beautifully.
“The thing that has touched me the most is the appreciation he is getting from star athletes.”
Balelo mentioned LeBron James and Patrick Mahomes.
“These are the people who truly understand how difficult it is to enter a club that’s never been done,” Balelo says. “That’s the most impressive part: people that have reached the pinnacle in their sport reaching out. For them to say, Wow, they see it and live it every day, the difficulty of achieving those goals.”
As Homer wrote in The Odyssey: “Immortals are never alien to one another.”
Like Odysseus, Ohtani does have a knack for drama. He once hit a line drive off the Green Monster at Fenway Park that dislodged his own number 17 metal plate from the ancient manual scoreboard. He hit his first Dodgers home run on April 3, the same date as his first MLB home run. When he reached 50-50 last week in Miami, he did so with the most prolific game ever by a hitter: six hits, including three homers, two stolen bases and 10 RBI. His was the 50th 50-homer season. Of course. The next night upon returning to Dodger Stadium, his teammates led a standing ovation upon his first at-bat, after which he set another record for most games in a season with a home run and stolen base.
We know the postseason is a minefield. It is a small sample with extra large impact. Joe Morgan hit .182 in the postseason. Ted Williams hit .200. Jeff Mathis hit .379. Aaron Boone hit .170 and is remembered for one swing. Anything can happen. It’s just that with Ohtani you have come to expect he is ready for the moment more than most.
“I’m just so proud of how he has handled this year and how he has stayed focused and just prepared and just gone out there every day,” Balelo says. “I can’t be prouder. Nobody really knows what we’ve been through. It’s really amazing to see this athlete and more so this person handle this whole situation the way he has.
“I’m really happy for him and for the Dodger organization and now the nation to really have a chance to see him on this stage. The way people are appreciating him is indicative of his humility, his kindness and the way he approaches the game. That part has been the most gratifying. People are finding his true identify after seven years.”
As a child, Ohtani so loved baseball that people called him a “yakyu shonen,” a prodigy who holds the game deep in his heart. The uniqueness of 50-50 prompted not just awe at the feat but an appreciation of the person who did it. Casual fans checked in to see what the fuss was about and came away seeing the yakyu shonen in him. The way Ohtani exulted and threw his cap after striking out Trout, the way he pumped his fist upon the 50th home run, the way he shouted, “Let’s go!” while rounding the bases upon his game-tying homer Sunday … these are the expressions of pure joy in meaningful moments we had never seen before from him.
There is an organic quality to his greatness. He is setting records without chasing them.
“I’m not in awe. It’s like I’m numb,” Balelo says. “He does things like [Friday] night, he takes this high fastball out of the zone, off his back leg and just barrels it up and hits it over 400 feet.”
On the night Ohtani reached 50-50 with that mad burst of six hits—after going 2-for-10 with five strikeouts the previous two nights in Miami—Balelo had one question for him.
“Where,” he asked Ohtani, “did that come from?”
“I have no idea,” Ohtani replied.
Homer wrote in The Odyssey: “There is no greater fame for a man than that which he wins with his footwork or the skill of his hands.” Ohtani is the rarity who has achieved his fame by way of both means. The epic has begun. Tell us more, O Muse, about this man of many ways.
This article was originally published on www.si.com as A 50-50 Season Might Only Be the Start of the Shohei Ohtani Epic.
