Shohei Ohtani Makes Baseball Look Easy
Anybody who has ever played baseball knows how difficult it is-except Shohei Ohtani.
Shohei Ohtani is finishing yet another fantastic season. Last night he became the first player in MLB history to steal fifty bases and hit fifty home runs in the same season. Moreover, reached that milestone during what might have been the greatest offensive performance in a single game. Ohtani came to bat six times, hit a single, two doubles and three home runs while driving in ten runs. That would be a good week for most players. Ohtani’s 2024 season would be pretty special under any circumstances, but what makes it even more extraordinary is that before this year, Ohtani had never been known as a base stealer.
Before this year, Ohtani had never even stolen thirty bases, but now with nine games remaining he has 51. Ohtani’s newly found base stealing prowess is particularly impressive because not only has he suddenly started stealing bases, but he is doing it with a very high success rate. If he can avoid getting caught stealing twice more this season, Ohtani will become only the seventh player in history to steal fifty or more bases while getting caught five or fewer times.
Ohtani is only in his first season with the Dodgers, but he has already set the record for home runs in a single season by a Dodger. Slugging Dodgers legends from the franchise’s Brooklyn days including Gil Hodges and Duke Snider or from the team’s time in Los Angeles, including Mike Piazza, Frank Howard or Cody Bellinger never hit fifty home runs in a season.
What makes Ohtani so special is that he has been a great player in so many different ways. From 2021-2023, Ohtani was by far the most successful two-way player of the post-war era and had numerous firsts, including first player to win 15 games and hit 15 home runs in the same season or to have 150 hits and strike out 150 batters in the same season. And then, just as fans were becoming accustomed to Ohtani as one kind of sui generis player, he turned into another kind and is having, at least by one measure, the greatest power and speed season in baseball history.
There are a handful of players who have been so much better than their peers in one or more aspects of baseball that they make a very difficult game look easy, but even some of the greatest players never quite do that. For example, Willie Mays was the best player of the post-war era, and perhaps ever, but he never, from a statistical perspective made baseball look easy. He simply excelled at every aspect of the game.
The only other players who have made the game look as easy as Ohtani has were Babe Ruth and Barry Bonds. Before Ruth, home runs were seen as an oddity of little strategic value because they were so rare and difficult to hit. Ruth changed that as he smashed home runs at record paces even while spending some time as a pitcher.
Bonds had established himself as a great all-around player somewhat reminiscent of Willie Mays during the first decade of his career, but in the early 21st century began to hit home runs at a freakishly high rate. Bonds set the single season and career home run marks during the final seven years of his career.
There are countless quantitative ways to measure how great a hitter Bonds was during those years, but one that stands out for me is that from 2001-2004 more than 39% of Bonds’s plate appearances resulted in a walk or a home run. However, as great as Bonds was during that period, that was the height of PED era, and Bonds’s transformation from a sublimely wonderful to a cartoonishly great player was almost certainly made possible through those PEDs. Therefore, Bonds had little lasting impact on how the game is played.
Ruth, on the other hand, had an enormous influence on baseball both off and on the field. The baseball played around the world today is very much the game Ruth pioneered as he moved baseball from the deadball era to the power era that continues to define the game. Within a few years of Ruth becoming a full time outfielder and slugger home runs took center stage in the baseball offense panoply and, a century later, show no signs of leaving.
Almost a century later, Ohtani proved himself an elite two-way player at a time when nobody had even tried to do that in decades. Then, several years into his illustrious career, Ohtani had the most impressive power-speed season in history, despite almost no previous evidence that he was an elite base stealer. In a game that has become increasingly specialized in recent years, Ohtani has moved in the precise opposite direction.
The question Ohtani raises is whether he will change the game or if he is simply a unicorn to be admired while he is still playing. While it is unlikely anybody as good as Ohtani at so many disparate aspects of the game will come around again for a while. It is possible that his career trajectory will force teams and players to rethink specialization in today’s game.
"From 2021-2023, Ohtani was by far the most successful two-way player of the post-war era."
That's World War I, right? Or Civil War?