The Los Angeles Dodgers are finally enjoying the extent of Shohei Ohtani’s greatness as he completed his second start on the pitcher’s mound in a Dodgers uniform on Sunday.
On the bump, Ohtani threw a scoreless inning, punching out a pair of batters and generating as many swings and misses over 18 pitches. In the batter’s box, Ohtani had a casual five-RBI game with a triple and a two-run home run.
Despite these incredible feats from the reigning National League MVP, Ohtani still believes that he can do more on the diamond.
“I’ve been able to come back to game action earlier than expected. In that sense, I do feel like I do have to work on some things,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “But at the same time, I do feel like I can perform better, even better than I used to be able to perform at.”
Offensively, Ohtani is constantly proving why he is one of the highest-regarded players in baseball history. On the mound, there is plenty to be desired from Ohtani given his past.
After two Tommy John surgeries and 22 months away from the mound, Ohtani is very clearly still ramping up to his fullest potential on the mound. But paired with his historic 2024 campaign, his statement about coming back even stronger should be extremely promising to fans.
As for pitching, perhaps Ohtani’s best MLB season on the mound came in 2022. He went 15-9 with a 2.33 ERA across an MLB-career-high 166 innings pitched, hurling an absurd 219 strikeouts to just 44 walks to earn the No. 4 spot in Cy Young award voting.
Ohtani doesn’t need to have another historic offensive season to perform better than he is used to, but when he is back to pitching more innings and shelling out strikeouts at a similar clip to his past form, things will feel more familiar.
Ohtani is currently dominating on offense, as expected, leading the National League in home runs, slugging percentage, OPS, and OPS+. As he continues to look more like the pitcher he was on the Los Angeles Angels, and more importantly, provide more quality innings for the Dodgers, he will only further his legend and baseball immortality.
