By: Andrew Mbow  

There have been many greats in the sport of baseball. Some known for their swing, others known for their arm. However, rarely are players known for both. Shohei Ohtani, a baseball player of Japanese origin is making his mark on the entire sport this year. A current player for the Anaheim Angels, and the current home run leader (as of 8-20-21) is surely making his mark.   So, what makes this guy so good? Well, it starts at the game’s foundation. If you play at a major league level, you’re either good at hitting or pitching. When player get to the college and low minor league levels, they start to specialize in either hitting and fielding or pitching, that’s just how it is. People like Ozzie Albies for the Atlanta braves are awesome at fielding and hitting the ball, however he would be terrible at pitching. And on the other hand, Aroldis Chapman, The Allstar caliber fire-balling southpaw pitcher for the Yankees is great at pitching, however if you were asking him to step in the box, he would strike out nearly every time. The last ball player to be notoriously good at both hitting, pitching, and fielding was George Herman Ruth in the 20’s, otherwise known, as Babe Ruth. Shohei Ohtani is doing that today almost 100 years later.   Now that you know the basics, let’s get into the statistics segment. The amount of times a batter hits the ball and gets on base is called batting average, the league average being .248. The next statistic that matters to us is wRC+, which is a metric where the league average is set at 100, so if a player has a 150, they are 50% better than the average player. Next is Slugging, Slugging is a metric that defines how well a player hits the ball. An example of this is that if in a player’s first at-bat he hits a double (he takes 2 bases), he would have a 2.000 slugging percentage. The last metric is for pitchers and is called ERA. ERA is a pitcher best representation of their abilities; it states the average amount of runs a pitcher will give up in 6 innings. A phenomenal ERA is between 2 and three, league average is around 4 or 5.   Now it’s time for Shohei’s background. Shohei played from 2013-2017 on the Hokkaido Nippon-Han fighters. On the Ham fighters he put up behemoth numbers, with a 2.5 ERA and a .286 Batting average with an astounding 48 home runs. He then got signed to the angels in 2018 for a 2 year, 8.5-million-dollar contract. He didn’t play during the 2019 season due to his wished to both pitch and bat for himself, he then played very little during his 2020 season due to injury and a shortened season. So, this year is his true breakout season.   Right now, he has a .272 batting average, 40 homeruns, and a jaw-dropping 2.8 ERA. If that isn’t enough, Shohei also plays the outfield. So after he pitches multiple innings. Of 100+ mph fastballs with movement, he can move to the outfield and play just fine. Another quality of Shohei is his speed. Shohei is the 45th fastest player out of 532 players in the league topping out at 29 feet per second, or 20 miles an hour.       Lastly, is Shohei’s amazing ability to hit the baseball hard. Shohei, as of August 24th 2021, has 40 homeruns. The furthest of which was 463 feet. This is more than 1 ½ football fields. This is a monster achievement and is something that even the most elite players in the game cannot do.   Shohei Ohtani is an enigma. He has accomplished a feat that no one in almost 100 years has been able to do effectively. He can hit, pitch and field. Realistically, we will never see someone with the same skill level as Shohei Ohtani again for the rest of our lives. This makes Shohei Ohtani one of the true greats of the game and a sight to behold.