Since his debut in 2018, the way the game of baseball has been played has changed forever. The infamous two-way player from Japan, Shohei Ohtani, has been a debatable topic in conversations about being the greatest baseball player of all time for years now. However, after this 2024 Major League Baseball (MLB) season, he may have cemented himself as the best baseball player to ever step foot on the field.
As early as his freshman year in high school, Ohtani’s talent and skills have been sought after by scouts from multiple MLB teams, the first team being the Boston Red Sox.
After playing professional baseball in Japan for four years, Ohtani decided to enter the Major Leagues signing with the Los Angeles Angels, where he had one of the most historic rookie seasons in baseball history.
In his rookie season, he ended with a batting average of .285 and 22 home runs along with an impressive earned run average (ERA) of 3.31 and 63 strikeouts on 10 starts, winning himself the American League Rookie of the Year Award. From these statistics alone, it was clear that baseball was going to be entering an era that has not been seen in a century.
The last person to achieve statistics of this caliber was Babe Ruth in the early 20th century, where his competition was no where near as competitive as the league is today.
Throughout the years following Ohtani’s rookie season, he has been improving exponentially, winning numerous prestigious de awards, such as the American League Most Valuable Player award, which he has won twice, and two Silver Slugger Awards.
However, these awards do not showcase what Ohtani does for the benefit of baseball outside of just his awards and statistics.
Because of Ohtani’s unique playstyle of pitching, as well as hitting, it inspires change within the next generation of baseball players, challenging the traditional ways of playing the game. Customarily, position players do not pitch, and pitchers are very poor hitters, but ever since Ohtani joined the MLB six years ago, this notion has broken the barrier of what’s possible in modern-day baseball.
Not only has Ohtani re-innovated the way baseball is played today, but he has also impacted the MLB substantially off of the field.
When Ohtani was signed to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2023, Fanatics reported that more jerseys of Ohtani were sold in 48 hours following him being signed than any other player player in the history of the company. In those 48 hours, Fanatics reported that more Ohtani jerseys were sold in Japan alone than all MLB team jerseys combined over the past two years. Ohtani’s global impact is like no other, as people around the world look up to him as their personal hero.
There is no denying that Ohtani’s career is one of the most historic and impressive in MLB history, but after Sept. 19, he might have surpassed all of the greats.
On that day, Ohtani achieved baseball history when he became the first and only player to ever hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in the same season. Ohtani will eventually retire as the greatest two-way player to ever play the game of baseball, and after this season, possibly the best of all time.
