Shohei Ohtani: The Best is Yet to Come
As you’re reading Off the Bench Baseball, I surely don’t need to tell you who or what Shohei Ohtani is. Yet, for clarifications sake, let’s take a moment to be sure we’re all starting the following discussion on the same page:
Coming into the 2024 season, the 29-year-old Ohtani has a Rookie of the Year award, two Most Valuable Player awards*, and two Silver Slugger awards on his resume. He also has an MLB Player of the Year award, a home run title, three All-Star appearances, and has led the league in triples, OBP, SLG, OPS+ and intentional walks drawn. Given his accomplishments and abilities as a pitcher, many baseball fans consider him, not unreasonably, to be the best baseball player to ever step between the lines.
(*As his pitching career is on the side burner for now, we won’t make a big deal about his 4th place finish in the 2022 Cy Young voting, or his career average of 11.4 strikeouts per nine innings – but we will mention only Aaron Judge breaking a 61-year-old home run record kept Ohtani from three straight AL MVP awards.)
As you likely remember, all the above, plus an unparalleled ability to generate revenue for his employers resulted in Ohtani earning a record contract. Shortly after that, his name was dragged into a potentially career ending scandal, which thankfully for all of us, didn’t result in anything tarnishing Showtime’s image in any way. Yet, it’s fair to say there was a little more than the usual amount of pressure on the player this spring.
Now almost one third of the way into the 2024 season – not a big sample size by baseball standards, but certainly not insignificant either – Shohei Ohtani has showed us something else:
We may not have seen his peak yet, which is absolutely terrifying to consider. He’s actually getting better.
As of Sunday morning, Ohtani had posted an OBP of .418 and a SLG of .661 leading to a wRC+ of 204 – the SLG and wRC+ lead all of baseball, the OBP is third highest. All three of those numbers exceed his 2023 totals of .412/.654 and 180 respectively, and those 2023 numbers were up from his 2022 numbers of .356/.519 and 142.
It’s not just the old school, results based OBP and SLG he’s consistently been improving in either. If you prefer advanced stats, his xwOBA has risen from .383 in 2022, to .427 in 2023 and currently sits at .486 in 2024. (As you would expect, his actual wOBA went up each season as well.) And even though his 2022 average exit velocity of 92.9 put him in the 97th percentile that season, he’s been consistently improving at smashing baseballs too – his 2023 average EV of 94.4 topped his 2022 performance and he’s currently sitting on a 94.8 average EV in 2024.
In the chance you’re thinking that vaporizing baseballs – although important, isn’t everything – I have some news for you: He’s getting better at other, more subtle aspects of baseball as well.
Despite hitting the ball harder, he strikes out less often. His K% – stop me if you’ve heard this before – has improved for three straight seasons, going from 29.6% in 2022, to 24.2% in 2023 to 19.1% in 2024. As you would expect, he hasn’t spent three seasons trying to make contact for contact’s sake either has his barrel rate has risen from 16.8, to 19.6, to 22.2 over the past three seasons too.
Furthermore, even though he’s not currently pitching and is only a DH, he’s also become a better base stealer (because of course he has). In 2022, Ohtani stole 11 bases, followed that with 20 steals in 2023 and is on pace for 37 swipes in 2024.
Here’s the remarkable part: His success rate on stolen base attempts has improved along with the stolen base totals. He posted an unimpressive 55% success rate on steals in 2022, improved that to a solid 77% rate in 2023 and is currently, and rather casually, sitting on a 100% success rate this year, going 11 for 11 on steal attempts.
All the above has him on a pace for 10.1 bWAR – almost 50 percent more than the single season record by a DH, set by Edgar Martinez who posted a 7.0 bWAR season in 1995.
The fact that Ohtani is only 29 and has consistently and inexorably improved at virtually everything – when he was already in the GOAT conversation – is beyond adjectives. It certainly raises the distinct and absolutely remarkable possibility that we haven’t seen Ohtani’s peak yet.
I hope you’re not assuming that because this isn’t the steroid era anymore, that players peak in their late 20’s and it’s all downhill in their 30s. As a reminder, Willie Mays had his best offensive season at age 34. Ted Williams had arguably his best hitting season at age 38 and Henry Aaron had what was clearly his best season at age 37. Three players who are unquestionably in the top ten in any GOAT conversation and were all on inner circle Hall of Fame paths at Ohtani’s age, all improved as hitters in their 30s – it’s not unreasonable to think Ohtani will as well, particularly if he’s not playing the field.
I have no idea how high the peak of Mount Ohtani will eventually reach, and neither do you. I do know for certain that it is going to be a heck of a lot of fun to watch.
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