Back in 1988, it would have been hard to fathom the Los Angeles Dodgers ever making a better free-agent signing than Kirk Gibson.
They contracted him for $4.5 million over three years, and all he did out of the gate was have a career-best season, win the National League MVP and contribute a legendary home run to a World Series win.
Yet here we are 36 years later, where Shohei Ohtani is on one of his missions to make all prior benchmarks look quaint by comparison.
When Ohtani signed his 10-year, $700 million deal with the Dodgers in December, he set seemingly impossible-to-reach standards for himself to live up to. Yet there is perhaps no greater visual representation of how well he’s living up to the hype than the line for his bobblehead giveaway at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday:
Unless, of course, one favors a statline that emits the same glow as whatever was in the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.
Ohtani needed a record-low 126 games to become the sixth member of Major League Baseball’s 40-40 club. He now has 42 home runs and stolen bases apiece, putting him in a place where only Alex Rodriguez had ever gone before.
All this is still with a month left in the regular season, plus whatever comes after when Ohtani finally plays in the MLB postseason for the first time.
It’s enough to make you wonder: Even for a guy who already has two MVPs and a rep as the greatest two-way player in history, just how much better can it get for Ohtani in 2024?
Ohtani’s Pursuit of 50-50 Feels Like a Done Deal
With one more home run and one more stolen base, Ohtani will have gone where no player ever has before. There has never been a 43-43 season. Never.
But you know what’s better than random numbers? Nice, round numbers. Like, for example, 50-50.
It’s rare for a player to achieve even the first of those marks, as only 31 hitters have ever clubbed 50 home runs in a season. And for those who did, Rodriguez and Willie Mays co-hold the high mark for stolen bases with 24.
The notion that Ohtani could more than double that total in joining the 50-homer club ought to be absurd, but he’s actually on pace to do better. After rewarding all those bobblehead hounds (plus that other hound) with a homer and two stolen bases on Wednesday, he’s on track to finish with 51 homers and 51 steals.
Rather than slowing down, Ohtani’s pursuit of 50-50 is speeding up. Split his 131 games into an 86-game sample and a 44-game sample, and you get these 162-game projections:
- First 86 G: 51 HR, 32 SB
- Last 45 G: 54 HR, 90 SB
At this rate, it would be surprising if Ohtani doesn’t get to 50-50. It would be about as surprising as him somehow not winning his third MVP, which would make him and Frank Robinson the only two players to win the award in both the American League and National League.
Because he’s taking this year off from pitching and he’s only made appearances as a designated hitter, Ohtani would also become the first player to win an MVP after never making any kind of throw in any kind of official capacity. It’s been all bat and legs and no arm.
You know, just in case anyone was wondering if there were any new ways to answer “No” to the question of whether there’s anything Ohtani can’t do.
This Is a Free-Agent Debut for the Ages
Meanwhile, the other feat Ohtani is working on in 2024 involves showing up many of the greatest free-agent debuts in MLB history.
Yes, even Gibson’s.
By Baseball Reference’s accounting, Gibson was worth 6.5 WAR in the first year of his Dodgers contract in ’88. By FanGraphs’, he was worth 6.2 WAR.
Even with no defensive or pitching value to speak of, Ohtani is already at 6.7 and 6.4, respectively. He’s projected to finish with 7.6 fWAR, which would put his 2024 season among the best ever for players in the first year of a free-agent contract.
As it stands, the list looks like this:
- Roger Clemens, 1997: 10.7 WAR
- Barry Bonds, 1993: 10.5 WAR
- Randy Johnson, 1999: 9.5 WAR
- Alex Rodriguez, 2001: 7.8 WAR
- Greg Maddux, 1993: 7.5 WAR
This is a list of living legends. Major awards ultimately went to Bonds (MVP) and Clemens, Johnson and Maddux (Cy Young) for their efforts. Rodriguez lost out to Ichiro Suzuki in 2001, though that wasn’t for lack of superior numbers. Even today, A-Rod’s 2001 season is still one of only four to feature 200 hits and 50 homers.
The catch, though, is that none of these five seasons comes with an especially noteworthy October addendum.
Clemens, Bonds and Rodriguez missed out on the playoffs. Johnson and Maddux made it, but it’s doubtful either has fond recollections of the experience. Johnson served up seven runs in his lone start in the ’99 playoffs, while Maddux took the L in a decisive Game 6 of the ’93 National League Championship Series.
It is to this end where Ohtani can look to Gibson with equal parts envy and determination in his eyes.
Ohtani’s October Moment Is Nigh
As bad as you think it was during Ohtani’s seven years with the Los Angeles Angels, it was probably worse. Beyond never making the playoffs, the Angels’ chances of winning the AL West between 2018 and 2023 peaked at a mere 38.5 percent in April 2021.
By contrast, the Dodgers’ chances of winning the NL West this year have never gone lower than 61.6 percent.
Not surprising, given that the Dodgers have won more games than any other franchise since 2013. And barring a total collapse, Ohtani’s faith in them will be validated with an 11th division title in 12 years, plus a trip straight to the National League Division Series.
Then all he’ll have to do is keep holding up his end of the bargain.
How Ohtani will handle October would be anyone’s guess even if he had an extensive playoff track record. Past performance is never any guarantee of future returns, after all, and that may be doubly true of the notorious crapshoot that is the MLB postseason.
Ohtani’s entire career is nonetheless a case study that suggests, for him, no stage is too big or set of lights too bright. If anything, he’s like a Jedi in that he only becomes more powerful whenever a big moment tries to strike him down.
Remember the World Baseball Classic? Of course, you do.
Yet not to be overlooked are his being the best high-leverage hitter in baseball over the last four seasons or how he carried the Dodgers through fellow MVP Mookie Betts’ two-month absence. While Betts was out between June 17 and August 11, Ohtani posted a 1.042 OPS with 16 homers and 17 steals in 45 games.
Besides, don’t you just have that feeling? That feeling like the roads of Ohtani’s career have all been leading to this?
As amazing as he was in his Rookie of the Year-winning season in 2018 and in his three-year run as one of MLB’s best hitters and pitchers between 2021 and 2023, the former was just a tease and the latter felt like one sustained act. None of the three really stands out as the season in retrospect.
Even with the end still left to be written, it’s the season happening right now that feels like something special. It is Ohtani taking yet another new approach to rewriting the rules for what’s possible in baseball. Especially if his trajectory takes him as far as it could, 2024 may well end up feeling like his signature season.
Unless, that is, he finds another way to outdo himself.
