Shohei Ohtani Is the GOAT
Just over half a century ago, Major League Baseball introduced the designated hitter rule in the American League, consigning pitchers to the bench for half of each game. This year marks only the third since the National League adopted the still-controversial rule permanently. Now, less than six weeks into the 2024 season, Shohei Ohtani — a star pitcher as well as a hitter — is on track to deliver not just the best DH season in league history but possibly the most valuable overall performance in all of MLB.
Even that description doesn’t do Ohtani’s season justice. The 29-year-old Japanese megastar is having the best start of his career at the plate while taking a break from pitching to recover from UCL surgery. This reduced workload has allowed him to focus entirely on hitting, leading to a stellar debut season with the Los Angeles Dodgers following an offseason in which he signed a largely deferred yet still extremely lucrative $700 million free agent deal. As of the last week in May, Ohtani boasted a .370/.434/.705 slash line and a 217 wRC+, with projections of 48 home runs, 61 doubles, 136 runs, 118 RBIs, 451 total bases, and an 11.7 fWAR. These numbers would break the single-season fWAR record for a full-time DH — set by former Mariners star Edgar Martinez — by several orders of magnitude. In fact, Ohtani's current projections place him among the best in the modern era, with only two players since 1928 having reached an 11.7 fWAR or higher in a season. Additionally, his 217 wRC+ would be the highest since Barry Bonds achieved it three times in the early 2000s, and the best non-Bonds figure since 1957.
With Ohtani, who heroically won the World Baseball Classic for Japan in 2023, one simply cannot stop with the superlatives. The 2023 World Baseball Classic had a storybook ending: Shohei Ohtani struck out Mike Trout, then his teammate with the Los Angeles Angels, to close out Japan's championship game win. Ohtani came out of the bullpen to get the final three outs of the 3-2 win. MLB could not have scripted a better finish. Japan won its third-ever WBC title — the most among any participating country — and thanks in part to the championship game save, Ohtani was named the World Baseball Classic MVP. He hit .435/.606/.739 with four doubles, a home run, and 10 walks in the tournament while also pitching to a 1.86 ERA with 11 strikeouts in 9 2/3 innings. Ohtani was, truly, the best hitter and pitcher in the WBC. But this should come as no surprise: he is, after all, an athlete who can throw a 102-mph fastball, launch a ball off the barrel of his bat at 119 mph, and reach a max sprint speed of 19.8 mph.
Indeed, Ohtani is the greatest all-around baseball player Japan has ever produced, the kind of once-in-a-century performer that baseball-mad country has been trying to develop since visitors from the U.S. introduced the sport at the beginning of the Meiji era. He is the best two-way player in the history of baseball, including Babe Ruth, a great pitcher who had a pair of solid pitching-and-hitting years in 1918 and 1919 before leaving the mound to focus on swatting home runs. Although saying so will infuriate many fans, Ohtani blows Babe’s two-way numbers out of the water, particularly on the mound, and he is doing so with a “live” ball rather than a “dead” one in a league that is not only integrated but full of the best players from all around the world. He is arguably the greatest active athlete in any sport: Imagine Argentine footballer Lionel Messi if he played as both forward and keeper or quarterback Patrick Mahomes if he also started in the defensive secondary and punted the ball (Washington Redskins great Sammy Baugh, one of the most Ohtani-like athletes of yore, actually did all three) and you’re on the way to understanding the extent of what Ohtani has already accomplished.
This is rarefied air for sports-obsessed Japan, a country that twice came close to producing the world’s finest athlete — the great judoka Masahiko Kimura, who defeated all comers in various combat sports, and the massively muscled sumo Chiyonofuji, who reigned as yokozuna for a decade from 1981 to 1991 and physically outclassed contemporaries in nearly all of the strength-oriented sports, from football to freestyle wrestling. Japan can also reasonably claim to have produced baseball’s best singles hitter, the metronomic Ichiro Suzuki, who set MLB’s single-season record for hits, 262, and, between stints in MLB and Japan’s Nippon Professional Baseball league, also holds the all-time career hits record, 4,367. But a country famous for sharpening its most promising athletes to a fine point with excessive practice or, more commonly, destroying their bodies with overtraining, had never produced a perfect natural athlete: No Usain Bolt, Bruce Jenner, Michael Phelps, or LeBron James arose from that archipelago. Until Ohtani, that is. Ohtani changed everything.
Robert Whiting, an American sportswriter who spent most of his career in Japan, summarized the Japanese mania for practice in You Gotta Have Wa, a masterly account of baseball in the land of the rising sun: “In the U.S. we believe that a player has a certain amount of natural ability and with practice he reaches a certain peak point … but the Japanese believe there is no peak point. They don’t recognize limits.” Most of the time, this results in burnout — pitchers’ arms destroyed by too many practice throws, batters’ wrists and elbows ruined by too many practice swings, sprinters’ legs degraded by too many practice laps. Occasionally, however, you get performers like Yoshihide Kiryu, Ryota Yamagata, and Yuki Koike, three of the only nonblack sprinters in the history of the world to break 10 seconds in the 100-meter dash. Much more populous China, by comparison, has two. Or take Suzuki, who was a flawless if limited baseballer, a highly specialized player who excelled at slap-hitting baseballs and chasing them down in the field. Never has Japan given us a stupor mundi, a wonder of the world, on the order of Ohtani.
No one has ever hit 46 home runs and struck out 156 batters in a season. Ohtani did in 2021. No one has ever hit 34 home runs and struck out 219 batters in a season. Ohtani did in 2022. No one has ever hit 44 home runs and struck out 167 batters in a season. Ohtani did in 2023. No one will ever do these things again — unless Ohtani betters them in 2025.
Fittingly, Ohtani’s recent 10-year, $700 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers is the most lucrative contract in sports history. He beat out the previous MLB record holder Mike Trout, who signed a $430 million, 12-year contract with the Los Angeles Angels in 2019. Ohtani won’t get that money all at once. Instead, he will defer $68 million of his $70 million annual salary throughout those 10 years. This means that he will be getting $2 million a year to play for the Dodgers, or $20 million, from 2024 to 2033 — which is fine given that Ohtani appears to have few interests or expenditures outside of baseball. He will then get his deferred money, without interest, from 2034 to 2043. The unusual structure is intended to provide the Dodgers additional cash flow and payroll flexibility to pursue world championships that could only enhance Ohtani’s endorsement value, which is already the highest of any Japanese celebrity in the world.
Ohtani's obsession with baseball is evident in his daily routine and commitment. As a rookie in Japan, he would pitch for the team's minor league team during the day, then play right field for the major league team at night. By the time he left Japan at 23 years old, he didn't even have a driver's license because he only wanted to focus on baseball. His team wouldn't allow him to go out to dinner with his teammates; he was only allowed to go from the stadium to the hotel or the team's dormitories, where he lived during the season. Despite becoming the best and most famous athlete in Japan, he voluntarily stayed in the team's dormitories, usually reserved for young players, where players needed permission to leave. He literally trains while he sleeps, stating in an ESPN documentary that he gets ideas while he's sleeping and tries them in the game the next day.
Ohtani's dedication has been compared to the obsession and competitiveness of Kobe Bryant and Michael Jordan. Yet, his on-field demeanor is the opposite; instead of wagging his tongue or finger at foes, he is constantly apologizing and waving at people. He once threw a ball close to power-hitting first baseman Mark Canha's head, got yelled at by Canha, and then immediately apologized. During a brawl with the Mariners, he joined the pile and pulled a player out in the friendliest way possible. He is frequently seen picking up trash off the field, a habit taught in high school for good luck.
Ohtani's physical abilities made him the best player in the world before he even stepped foot in America. He set the Japanese record for the fastest pitch thrown in high school, the fastest pitch in Japanese history, and hit a home run that went through the roof of the Tokyo Dome before coming to MLB. MLB prospects are graded on a scale from 20 to 80, with 80 indicating Hall of Fame-level talent. Ohtani received an 80 in three different skills: power, speed, and his splitter. This level of talent in multiple skills is unprecedented in baseball history.
Unfortunately, Ohtani's intense dedication to baseball is so all-consuming that he likely didn't notice his interpreter embezzling millions to fuel a gambling addiction. Ippei Mizuhara, Ohtani's former interpreter, recently pleaded guilty to bank fraud and tax fraud after confessing to stealing over $16 million from Ohtani to fund illegal sports betting. Between December 2021 and January 2024, Mizuhara reportedly lost more than $40 million across roughly 19,000 individual bets, as detailed in a criminal complaint filed in April during a joint investigation by the IRS, the Department of Homeland Security, and the U.S. Attorney's Office.
Mizuhara, who had been with Ohtani since he joined the Angels in 2018, was fired one day into the 2024 MLB season following the revelation of the gambling scandal on March 20. Major League Baseball has since launched an investigation, with Ohtani firmly denying any involvement in or knowledge of Mizuhara's gambling activities. Prosecutors have confirmed that Ohtani was unaware of both the gambling and the unauthorized wire transfers from his bank account. Initially, Mizuhara claimed Ohtani was paying off his gambling debts, but he later admitted that Ohtani was oblivious to the financial misconduct — which would be received skeptically were it related to any player save the monomaniacal two-way star.
Ohtani's tireless path to the MLB was unconventional. After high school, he announced he would sign with a major league team, asking Japanese teams not to draft him. The Nippon Ham Fighters ignored this and drafted him anyway, offering him the ability to void his contracts and go to America whenever he wanted and to become a two-way player. Within three years, Ohtani became the second-best hitter and the best pitcher in Nippon Professional Baseball, winning MVP and every other award in Japan. In 2017, Ohtani requested his release to go to the MLB, costing him hundreds of millions of dollars as he could only sign for $3.5 million instead of waiting two more years for a $200 million contract.
Ohtani’s first weekend in the MLB was electric, hitting three home runs in his first four games and taking a perfect game into the seventh inning. He became the betting favorite to win MVP as a rookie but faced injuries, leading to Tommy John surgery — the first surgical obstacle that he would face, though not the last. Despite these challenges, he put up strong numbers, winning Rookie of the Year. He played 2019 solely as a hitter to recover his elbow, and although he hit well, he faced more injuries. The shortened 2020 season was his worst, marred by further injuries and the pandemic. In 2021, the Angels adopted a new approach, giving him the unprecedented two-way workload he had been demanding, resulting in the best season ever seen in baseball. He became the first player to be selected to the All-Star team twice in the same season, once as a pitcher and once as a hitter, and won numerous other awards.
Ohtani's 2021 ranks as the single greatest season by any athlete in sports history. Then, in 2022, he accumulated more WAR than in 2021, with an eight-game stretch in June where he made two starts, didn’t give up a single run, struck out 49% of batters, hit four home runs, and had 12 RBIs. His WAR during this stretch was more than the entire Detroit Tigers offense all season. Since 2021, Ohtani has racked up offensive numbers on par with Willie Mays and pitching stats comparable to Pedro Martinez. He seems destined to go down in history as the greatest baseball player of all time.
Provided, that is, that he recovers from the UCL injury that has kept him off the mound in 2024. Full recovery is never a guarantee for the world’s most elite athletes — as attested by the fate of star 1980s NFL running back and MLB outfielder Bo Jackson, who loomed larger than life in the pop culture firmament before suffering a debilitating hip injury in 1991 cost him his once-in-a-generation explosiveness.
But hypothetical injuries are something for the future. For now, the 2024 season appears likely to culminate in a third MVP award and 2025 offers the tantalizing prospect of yet another two-way baseball season like those that preceded it. Those of us who marveled at the mere fact that Brooks Kieschnick could do yeoman’s service as an average relief pitcher and a slightly above-average pinch hitter during his 2003 and 2004 seasons in Milwaukee grasp the magnitude of Ohtani’s accomplishment. As the great sports writer Red Smith once put it, apropos another baseball miracle — albeit a far more likely one, the 1951 New York Giants pennant victory that was secured by a single swing of Glasgow-born Bobby Thomson’s bat — after seeing such a wondrous thing, “only the utterly impossible, the inexpressibly fantastic, can ever be plausible again.”
Oliver Bateman is a historian and journalist based in Pittsburgh. He blogs, vlogs, and podcasts at his Substack, Oliver Bateman Does the Work.
