2023-12-10 03:24:26
When the Shohei Ohtani market first opened its doors six years ago, Major League teams looked around and wondered if all that was promised could actually be delivered.
An elite pitcher and an elite hitter? Ohtani was only 23 years old, he was very athletic, motivated and focused. In Japan he had proven himself adept at both tasks. But that doesn’t mean there weren’t serious doubts in the baseball industry about how long he would be able to pitch and hit.
Although the relative bargain that the Ohtani experiment represented at the time ($20 million in transfer fees and a bonus of a few million dollars) made it worth checking if all that could be true, executives, coaches, scouts and players wondered and murmured about the risk of injuries, what it meant to have a player like that on the roster, the schedule and the stress.
“Pitching would be difficult enough for him,” a major league pitching coach told Yahoo Sports at the time. “Being an everyday player on top of that, I just don’t see it happening. Not at an impact level. No chance”.
Well… it turns out there was at least a small chance.
Now that Ohtani is an established superstar, the financial equation – and the risk equation – has changed radically. Ohtani has earned the contract she will get by doing what no American League or National League player (no, not even Babe Ruth) has done before. The risk now has everything to do with his health, but in some ways more pronounced. Ohtani, after all, is coming off his second elbow surgery since 2018, is 29 years old, and human (…maybe).
We all know now, including that pitching coach, that we should not doubt Ohtani’s abilities. But we also shouldn’t blindly assume that what we’ve seen over the last three seasons – in which Ohtani has averaged a 161 OPS+ (61% better than league average) as a hitter and a 151 ERA+ as a pitcher (51% better than the league average) than average) – will be your norm once you have fully recovered from the operation. Theirs remains a huge task, both physically and mentally. Historic, captivating and unprecedented success, like what we saw between 2021 and 2023 (the only seasons in which Ohtani has played 110 or more games), should not be taken for granted.
But what would happen – and I hope the baseball gods forbid it – if Ohtani had to spend most of his new contract struggling to get back on track and/or on the disabled list? What if his elbow doesn’t allow him to throw again? What if his bat only performs average? What if this new contract is a colossal and disastrous failure?
After all, these things happen in baseball. Would Ohtani’s legacy as a baseball unicorn, a freak of nature, an astonishing rarity, be forever tarnished?
In a word, no. Because I’m here to tell you that Ohtani has already done enough to get into the Cooperstown Hall of Fame.
Well, okay, I’ll admit that Hall rules require a player to participate in 10 seasons to be inducted. Ohtani has played six, so, according to my calculations, he has four to go. I think he can do it.
But while I wouldn’t normally call a player with “only” three elite seasons (two MVPs and a second-place finish in voting) a future Hall member, Ohtani’s performance between 2021 and 2023 – and what it has meant for sport in general – is enough to make a plaque.
First, there’s performance: As of 2021, Ohtani ranks second in the Majors in OPS, with a .964 mark, trailing only Aaron Judge’s 1.017. He is fourth in home runs (124) and OPS+ (161), second in extra-base hits (228) and is tied for 18th in stolen bases (57). He has posted a 14.3 bWAR as a DH, which ranks 18th among position players.
It’s laughable (well, at least to me) to accompany any mention of Ohtani’s ranking in various offensive metrics with a reminder that… he’s also a pitcher! Remember those guys who were traditionally so bad at the plate that their visits to the plate were essentially eliminated from the sport with the universal DH? Yes, he’s one of them…except he’s not.
And before his second major elbow injury, Ohtani was a tremendously good pitcher. Again, from 2021 to 2023, his 2.84 ERA ranks sixth among those with at least 300 innings, his 151 ERA+ ranks fifth, his 31.4% strikeout rate ranks fourth, and his 14.2 bWAR as a pitcher ranks fourth. fifth seat.
Between his pitching and hitting ability, Ohtani posted a bWAR of 9.0 in 2021, 9.6 in 2022 and 10.0 in 2023. The only other players in history, according to Baseball-Reference, to have three consecutive seasons with a WAR of al minus 9.0 rest in the Hall of Fame: Babe Ruth, Bob Gibson, Lefty Grove, Mickey Mantle, Rogers Hornsby and Willie Mays, in addition to the all-time home run leader Barry Bonds. The only player in the 21st century to have more WAR than Ohtani in a three-season period was Bonds (2000-02, 2001-03 or 2002-04).
Oh, and Ohtani is already 4.1 WAR away from tying recent Hall of Fame inductee Harold Baines… but let’s not go there.
Look, what we’ve seen from Ohtani is special, no matter what comes in the future.
Of course, the history of the Major Leagues is littered with players who have had brilliant multi-season periods and not all of them are in the Hall of Fame. If names like Denny McLain, Dale Murphy, Don Mattingly or Darryl Strawberry want to talk to me about my theory that Ohtani has already done enough to be inducted into the Hall of Fame, that’s understandable.
But beyond that, Ohtani has placed himself among a special group of players who have left a mark, altering the complexity of the sport with their presence in the game. The purpose of the Hall – often with success stories and sometimes not so much – is to tell the history of sport through the careers of those who have marked a generation.
Candy Cummings, one of the least decorated pitchers in the Hall of Fame, in terms of numbers, was the one who invented the curveball (we can’t determine 100% that he invented it, but it’s a great story). Deacon White has few statistical arguments, but he was the one who gave the first professional hit in the league in 1871 and many credit him with the implementation of the catcher’s mask and the creation of the movements before throwing. That tipped the balance in his favor. King Gelly’s numbers are good, but his Cooperstown plaque reflects more of his “colorful” personality, his “bold” baserunning and the $10,000 that sent him from Chicago to Boston. He was one of the first big names, pioneering the popularity of the sport.
Is it curious that we compare players from so many years ago with Ohtani? Well, when not? It seems like every day someone posts something like: “Ohtani is the first player to make [x] from [y]”. And if that ‘and’ is not Ruth, she is someone from the late 19th or early 20th century.
But in modern times, when I think about the Ohtani case, I think of Rollie Fingers being inducted less for his numbers (he only led the league in saves three times) but more for, as his badge says, being the face of “the rise of the modern reliever.”
We don’t know yet what the long-term effects of Ohtani’s existence will be, but we’ve already seen some of the repercussions. For example, MLB literally had to change their rules for him, something that doesn’t happen every day. And in this year’s amateur draft he set a record with eight players who can hit and pitch through 20 rounds – double the last four drafts combined.
Place that tendency on what that pitching coach said six years ago about Ohtani “having no chance” to shine in both aspects in the Majors. It’s clear that Ohtani has forced people to change the way they think about what is possible or not.
Finally, Ohtani has strengthened the link with the Pacific. Like Ichiro did a few years ago, Major League clubs now go to Japan to look for talent. Last year, economist Katsuhiro Miyamoto published a study at Kansai University in which he found that Ohtani’s economic impact has totaled an estimated US$337 million combined between the United States and Japan. Ohtani’s stardom has also increased interest in the history of Nikkei baseball pioneers, who were marginalized, forgotten and sometimes even imprisoned in this country.
Considering all of the above, I don’t particularly care if Ohtani can live up to his new contract. Sure, I don’t mind if he continues to post 9.0 WAR seasons, but analyzing Ohtani solely by his numbers would be minimizing his impact.
This isn’t just about one of the best players we’ve ever seen. We can already say that the history of baseball in the 21st century would be incomplete without Ohtani. And for that reason, the Japanese is already a Hall of Fame.
#Shohei #Ohtani #Hall #Famer #Daily #List