Major League Baseball

Shohei Ohtani is powering his way to the most unique season in MLB history

Updated Jun. 11, 2021 1:12 p.m. ET

By Pedro Moura
FOX Sports MLB Writer

Shohei Ohtani swatted the longest home run of his career Tuesday at Angel Stadium, some 470 feet to near-straightaway center, one of the most impressive momentary displays in the ballpark’s 55-year history.

Ohtani is so many things: two-way trailblazer, athletic marvel, and the most powerful hitter in Major League Baseball this season.

Ohtani's .340 isolated power — slugging percentage minus batting average — is the best mark of any qualified hitter. Fernando Tatis Jr. would surpass him if he had batted enough, but that is the company Ohtani is keeping. He is hitting for more power than ever while his peers are managing less in this strikeout-laden era.

Oh, and Ohtani also pitches, sometimes particularly well. The Angels' standout will hit and pitch Friday night against Arizona, in his sixth such game this year. He will enter with a .951 OPS and a 2.76 ERA. But above all, Ohtani has proven for the first time this year that he can be a dominant everyday offensive player while pitching.

It is surprising given that the majority of evaluators, if forced to pick whether Ohtani would be more successful as an MLB hitter or pitcher, would have picked the latter. I know because I asked, in the hotly anticipated offseason before his 2018 debut.

Remember when Ohtani appeared overmatched during his 35 plate appearance in his first spring training, and evaluator after evaluator recommended he begin the season in the minor leagues to adjust to major-league pitching? He erased that doubt in weeks, not months or years.

But when Ohtani first signed with the Angels, three-and-a-half years ago this week, they didn’t even envision him batting more than 250, maybe 300, times per season. He is on pace to bat 614 times this season. That would shatter his career high, set in 2019 while he was recovering from Tommy John surgery. Ohtani has plenty of great hitting stretches in his past, but he has never done it while hitting this often and pitching regularly.

Even Babe Ruth never did exactly this. Ruth's hitting and pitching overlapped some in 1918 and 1919, but he was not a full-timer in either pursuit. Ohtani, so far in 2021, has come closer.

"What’s happened is they unleashed him," said Dan Evans, who evaluated Ohtani in Japan for five seasons as a Pacific Rim scout for the Toronto Blue Jays. "He’s always been harnessed. He’s always been that puppy with the tight leash and a vest, and you never let the dog off leash. Suddenly, this enormously talented, highly instinctive player doesn’t have those accommodations. As a result, we’re seeing such a unique excellence."

Evans, the former general manager of the Dodgers, is a longtime believer in Ohtani’s abilities. He remembers walking back to the train station in Sendai, Japan, after Ohtani pitched and hit against the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles on an afternoon in 2013. He felt a dazed disbelief at what he had just seen out of a teenager. People tend to remember when they first saw, or even heard, of Ohtani.

For Mike Trout, it was on YouTube. For former Angels teammate Andrelton Simmons, it was at a Japanese izakaya, while in Tokyo for the World Baseball Classic. For some scouts tasked with scouting Japan, like Evans, it was even earlier than 2013, when Ohtani was still in high school.

But the grades started flying in 2013, his rookie year in Nippon Professional Baseball. In Evans’s case, he said, he placed Ohtani at the top of the scale for his arm, hit tool, and power. Two of his pitches, his fastball and splitter, rated as 80s, as high as the scale goes. His defense was a 70, still great. As fellow scouts and co-workers saw him over the years, Evans came to expect their surprise. Future Angels general manager Perry Minasian, then working for Toronto, was among them.

One rival scout once asked Evans to check his stopwatch time on an infield single up the middle. He had timed Ohtani from home to first in 3.83 seconds, which couldn’t possibly be right. Evans showed him his own stopwatch: 3.83 seconds, it read. That is literally off the chart.

In 2021, Ohtani is also stealing bases at a faster pace. Only 10 major-leaguers have successfully swiped more than Ohtani’s nine this year. He might soon be walking more than ever, too. He drew three walks in a game twice this week, twice more than he ever had entering the week.

For that there is a simple explanation: As he has sustained his success, pitchers are throwing him fewer and fewer strikes. "I like the idea that he’s not up there expanding the strike zone," Angels manager Joe Maddon said.

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Of late, Ohtani is controlling the zone better from the mound as well. In his first four starts, he walked 19 batters. In his next four, he walked seven. His last start was his first major-league outing in which he did not issue a walk. And after an alarming May 19 velocity lull, he produced 3 more mph in his next two starts. Most importantly, his velocity has ticked up 1.5 mph when there are runners in scoring position, up from 95.3 mph with the bases empty to 96.8 mph in key spots.

"The velo is there when he wants it," Angels pitching coach Matt Wise said. "That’s the most incredible thing, when he decides to jump on a fastball late and it gets back up into that 97-98 range. His feel for the baseball right now is really, really strong, and we just have to continue to keep getting him out there so he gets those reps."

Earlier in his career, Ohtani’s two-way pursuit smacked more of a stunt than a feat of significant value. Two part-time players make only one full-timer. But if Ohtani maintains this pace for the last 100 games of the Angels’ season, it would be, without much argument, the most unique season in baseball history.

It’s worth remembering that the day the Ohtani signing was official, Billy Eppler, then the Angels GM, made a hefty comparison. Forget Babe Ruth. He said Ohtani reminded him of Trout, the future Hall of Famer he had observed for two years to that point. Trout and Ohtani are, obviously, very different hitters. Eppler made the comparison because of their single-minded focus on baseball, not their specific skills.

Maybe that is one element of what the doubting evaluators of March 2018 overlooked in Ohtani. His focus enabled him to adjust more quickly than anyone anticipated.

"For some reason, our game likes to pigeonhole players," Evans said. "This guy should never be pigeonholed. He should be allowed to be this unbridled, amazingly talented baseball player. This guy’s as special as there has ever been."

The Angels are allowing him. Let’s see how long he can keep this up.

Pedro Moura is the national baseball writer for FOX Sports. He most recently covered the Dodgers for three seasons for The Athletic. Previously, he spent five years covering the Angels and Dodgers for the Orange County Register and Los Angeles Times. More previously, he covered his alma mater, USC, for ESPNLosAngeles.com. The son of Brazilian immigrants, he grew up in the Southern California suburbs. Follow him on Twitter @pedromoura.