Shohei Ohtani- A name that if you follow baseball in any way, you’re familiar with. Whether you hate or love the dodgers, most people cannot deny that Shohei Ohtani is one of, if not the greatest and most talented players in today’s MLB. A machine behind the mound, and a monster behind the plate, Ohtani is sure to impress anyone with his elite proficiency in two major aspects of baseball- hitting and pitching.
Shohei Ohtani is a starting pitcher and hitter for the Los Angeles Dodgers, the defending World Series champions, with a .282 batting average (calculated by dividing the players total number of hits by the amount of at bats the player had, then rounded to three decimal places, meaning for every 10 at bats shohei had, around 3 of them resulted in a hit) and an ERA of 2.87 (the average amount of runs a pitcher gives up per 9 innings pitched). Shohei also had 55 home runs during the regular season. For comparison, Aaron Judge, widely considered one of the best hitters in baseball, had a batting average of .331, the highest in the league, and 53 home runs. Shohei being able to compete with top hitters and at the same time be dominant on the mound is nothing less of a once in a generation talent.
On top of being such a dominant player in the regular season, Shohei Ohtani had one of if not the greatest performance of all time in a post season baseball game against the Mariners in game 4 of the NLCS totaling double digit strikeouts with 10 K’s at the mound and 3 hits behind the plate. These stats are already impressive enough, but the real kicker is that all 3 of his hits… were home runs. Not only did he pitch an impressive game behind the mound, striking out 10 batters in 6 scoreless innings, he totaled 3 home runs- in one game- being the first starting pitcher ever to hit 3 home runs in a post season game. His performance will go down in history as one of, if not the greatest games of baseball ever played by a player
