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Ranking the feats that make Ohtani MLB's ultimate unique star
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Sure, there's not any win-and-get-in drama on the day all Major League Baseball teams will play their 162nd game. But that doesn't mean there's nothing to watch for. The calendar still offers one final gift to close out the 2022 MLB regular season: an opportunity to watch Shohei Ohtani pitch and hit and do all of the magical things he does one final time.
Even though the Los Angeles Angels have been playing months of meaningless baseball and no record exists for Ohtani to chase in these final days, there should be no such thing as Ohtani fatigue. Perhaps the sea of first-player-to-accomplish-this-in-more-than-a-century nuggets that come with his every accomplishment over the past two seasons numbs the senses, but fight that instinct we must.
Because for all the Tungsten Arm O'Doyle games on his ledger, all the moments in which the Angels' mediocrity endeavors to diminish his single-handed brilliance, there is an incontrovertible truth about Ohtani: Every day, he makes the impossible a reality.
Words struggle to capture what Ohtani has done in 2022. Babe Ruth tried the two-way experiment, and in 1918 foreshadowed his switch to being a full-time hitter: "I don't think a man can pitch in his regular turn, and play every other game at some other position, and keep that pace year after year." Well, this marks the second consecutive year of Ohtani keeping that pace, and at 28 years old, he shows no signs of slowing. On the contrary, he's getting better.
He has redefined what a baseball player can be. He is more than the Giannis, Mahomes or Haaland of his craft. He is the unicorn of unicorns. And to truly appreciate him, do not simply take these words for it or worry about drowning in numbers. To tell the story of the most exciting, jaw-dropping player in modern professional sports, we ranked his 2022 achievements, starting with impressive and ending at unbelievable.
.275/.357/.524, 34 home runs, 94 RBIs, 11 stolen bases
Ohtani's batting line this season would have been worthy of an All-Star selection at designated hitter. Granted, his slugging percentage is down nearly 70 points from last season -- leaguewide offense has dropped a quarter-run a game from last year -- but he has nearly equaled his total bases and his strikeout rate dropped from 29.6% to 23.9%.
Only Ohtani score: 1 unicorn out of 10. There are still 10 hitters with higher weighted on-base averages than Ohtani, so while his work at the plate rates, it's not exactly unicorn material.
15-8, 2.35 ERA, 161 innings, 123 hits, 43 walks, 213 strikeouts, 14 home runs allowed
Starting every sixth day, Ohtani leads all of baseball in strikeout rate and has held hitters to a .207/.262/.321 line. In other words, he turns the average hitter who faces him into Jackie Bradley Jr. The only thing holding him back from being the best pitcher in the world might be the limits on the number of innings he throws.
Only Ohtani score: 2 unicorns of 10. Five pitchers have booked more FanGraphs wins above replacement than Ohtani on the mound this season. He'll finish high in American League Cy Young voting, but as long as he isn't the obvious best, the unicorn score should reflect that.
With runners in scoring position: .323/.449/.798, 12 home runs in 127 plate appearances
This season, 11 players with at least 100 starts are OPSing over 1.000 with runners in scoring position. Only two are over 1.200. Ohtani tops the list at 1.247, just ahead of the person whose historically great season is the only thing standing between Ohtani and his second consecutive AL MVP award: Aaron Judge, who's at 1.241.
Only Ohtani score: 3 unicorns of 10. Over the last 10 full seasons, only five players have finished with an OPS higher than Ohtani's with runners in scoring position: Joey Votto in 2012, Miguel Cabrera in 2013, Mike Trout in 2018, Nolan Arenado in 2017 and Juan Soto in 2021. Having five guys ahead prevents full unicorn status, but when those five are likely future Hall of Famers, you can start to see where we are headed.
Ohtani's 9.3 wins above replacement account for 32.29% of the Angels' team total
Shockingly, this actually ranks third in MLB this season. Topping the list: Catcher Sean Murphy, who has 5.0 of Oakland's 9.4 WAR, and Soto, who even from San Diego still leads the woebegone Nationals with 2.7 of Washington's 7.9 WAR.
Only Ohtani score: 4 unicorns of 10. Do not let the putridness of the A's and Nats fool you. The average team leader's WAR percentage is 16.24%. Even at 11.4 WAR, Judge's production constitutes just 21.43% of the Yankees' total. Among other semi-competitive teams, the closest are Sandy Alcantara, at 24.15% of the Marlins' total, and Xander Bogaerts, at 21.85% of the Red Sox's.
Since June 9, Ohtani's pitching line: 12-4, 1.66 ERA, 113.2 IP, 79 hits, 32 walks, 148 strikeouts, six home runs allowed, opponent slash of .193/.252/.267, 12 of 18 starts with 0 or 1 run
Over the last four months, Ohtani has been the best pitcher in baseball. Only Dylan Cease has a superior ERA -- by .01 points. Ohtani has the best fielding independent pitching and expected FIP in the big leagues. Oh, and in that span, he's also hitting .296/.378/.575 with 23 home runs and 62 RBIs.
Only Ohtani score: 5 unicorns of 10. The only thing keeping from this scoring higher on the unicorn scale is the arbitrary timeframe.
His average fastball velocity of 97.3 mph is the third hardest among all starters and his maximum exit velocity of 119.1 mph is the third hardest among all batters
Oneil Cruz (122.4 mph) and Giancarlo Stanton (119.8 mph, twice) are the only players who have hit balls harder than the rocket double Ohtani laced off Jose Urquidy on April 10. And Sandy Alcantara (98.0 mph) and Gerrit Cole (97.8) are the sole pitchers to account for bigger heaters.
Let's dig a little deeper. Position players pitch a lot these days. The hardest pitch thrown by a non-pitcher since the advent of pitch-tracking -- and presumably before that -- came from then-Padres catcher Christian Bethancourt, who dabbled as a two-way player, at 97.3 mph on April 6, 2017. (Yes, the best a position player can do is average for Ohtani, who topped out this year at 101.4 mph.) The hardest-hit ball from a pitcher in that same time frame, non-Ohtani division, was Madison Bumgarner's 112.5-mph home run April 2, 2017.
Only Ohtani Score: 6 unicorns of 10. He throws 4 mph harder than any position player and hits the ball 6.6 mph harder than any pitcher. That's unicorny. But with the knowledge that someone like Rick Ankiel played pre-tracking, and that Hunter Greene as an amateur hit rockets and today averages 98.9 mph on his fastball -- he's more than 40 innings short of qualifying for the ERA title, which kept him off the list -- the possibility that someone could match Ohtani is enough to temper the rating.
Ohtani ranks 10th in MLB with 34 home runs and sixth with 213 strikeouts
The last player to finish in the top 10 in both home runs and strikeouts was Jim Whitney in 1883, with five homers and 345 strikeouts (in 514 innings pitched). Whitney played in an era when pitchers threw from 45 feet away, were required to keep their pitching hands below their shoulders and dealt from a boxed area (from which Whitney regularly jumped forward, earning him the nickname "Grasshopper Jim").
If we're talking about comparisons from the live-ball era, here's another good one: Before Ohtani, the most pitching strikeouts in a 30-homer-plus season belonged to Ruth, who in 1921 and 1930 punched out three batters in each of those seasons.
Only Ohtani Score: 7 unicorns of 10. Three words: Grasshopper. Jim. Whitney.
Ohtani's .882 OPS is ninth in the big leagues and his 2.35 ERA is sixth among starters with 150-plus innings
These numbers are a little more impressive when placed side-by-side, right? Ohtani as a hitter makes the first-team lineup using the most commonly used statistic to illustrate the complete worth of a hitter. His OPS this year beats those of Mookie Betts, Rafael Devers, Pete Alonso and Jose Ramirez, among many other stars. And as a pitcher, his ERA alone puts him in the conversation for a first-team rotation spot -- especially considering his FIP and xFIP beat all five starters ahead of him.
Only Ohtani Score: 8 unicorns of 10. Yes, there are two stats more impressive than this, which is pretty damn rainbow-tailed.
On back-to-back days in June, Ohtani had an eight-RBI game and a 13-strikeout start
Four players posted eight-RBI games this season. Of them, only Ohtani pitches. Fifteen players have punched out 13 or more in 2022. Of them, only Ohtani hits. The only thing that could beat doing it on consecutive days is managing to accomplish it in the same game. Nobody doubts he could.
Only Ohtani Score: 9 unicorns of 10. In the live-ball era, there have been 155 eight-RBI-plus games. Just one came from a pitcher: Tony Cloninger, who hit two grand slams on July 3, 1966. This may come as a shock, but none of the 1,155 games with 13 strikeouts over that span was spun by a position player. Each number by itself is special. Together, on back-to-back days, is bonkers.
Between hitting and pitching, Ohtani participated in 1,295 plate appearances this season. The next-closest player had 886.
Think about that for a second. Alcantara, who is currently the game's preeminent innings-eater, faced 886 batters this year -- 243 more than Ohtani's 643 on the mound. Alcantara came to the plate zero times. Ohtani has logged 652 plate appearances as a hitter. Which means Ohtani was involved in 46.2% more plate appearances than the second-most-prolific player.
If every plate appearance offers opportunity to input value, Ohtani's 2022 season has been the richest since Steve Carlton faced 1,193 batters and went to the plate 109 times in 1982. The last player to exceed even 1,200 total was knuckleballer Charlie Hough in 1987.
Not even Ruth could match Ohtani in the seasons during which he tried his hand at two-way action. In 1918, he faced 660 hitters and went to the plate 382 times. A year later, in his final season going both ways, he pitched to 570 batters and had 543 plate appearances. The two years in which he was involved in more plate appearances than Ohtani, 1916 and 1917, Ruth was predominantly a pitcher -- and in the first season posted an MLB-best adjusted ERA that was 58% better than league average. Not bad -- unless it's compared to 2022 Ohtani, who's 69% better.
Only Ohtani Score: 10 unicorns of 10. No one has ever qualified for the batting title and ERA titles in the same season. With one inning pitched today, Ohtani will do so. It will be a fitting cap on a season for the ages. And away he'll fly, into the last offseason before he reaches free agency, which will answer a question few have ever thought to ask: What's a unicorn really worth?
