Despite World Series troubles, Shohei Ohtani’s 2024 will go down as one of the best seasons ever

It was a bumpy landing, but Shohei Ohtani left his mark on MLB history this year with a season that will go down as one of the best in the history of the sport.

Consider the pressure on the Japanese superstar when he signed a $700 million contract. Consider how he spent much of his time off the field rehabbing a surgically repaired right elbow. Consider the personal struggle he went through when it was revealed that his best friend had stolen millions of dollars from him.

Ohtani could have been crushed in 2024. He couldn’t have lived up to baseball’s biggest expectations, and he would have had plenty of excuses for that. Instead, he mounted a campaign that belongs as much in Japanese folklore as it does in the annals of baseball history.

It’s all about MLB’s first 50 home run, 50 stolen base season. It didn’t feel possible until Ohtani did it. Before the 2024 season, the closest a player ever came to hitting 42 home runs and 46 bags was Alex Rodriguez in 1998.

Ohtani ended up hitting 54 home runs and stealing 59 bases, crossing the 50-50 threshold in the biggest way possible.

No player has defined the word “unprecedented” as well as Ohtani, and he distilled it into one game on September 19, when he recorded three home runs, two stolen bases, five extra base hits, six singles and 10 RBI. No player had achieved all these totals in a number of games throughout his career, and Ohtani did it all in one day at Marlins Park.

There is now a part 2 to that statistic. No player had hit 50 home runs in a season, stolen 50 bases in a season, won MVP and won a World Series title in his career. With the Dodgers winning the World Series Wednesday in Game 5 and Ohtani likely a unanimous National League MVP, he will once again be poised to enjoy a career full of prosperity in no time.

Here’s how to turn a subpar World Series performance into a footnote: be the player who got your team there and then let your teammates lift you up. And make no mistake, the Dodgers would have been in a tough spot if they hadn’t had Ohtani this year.

It is as close as possible to an objective fact. Baseball Reference estimates that Ohtani was worth 9.2 wins above replacement in his season, just like a designated hitter. Had the Dodgers not acquired him and instead made the likely move of re-signing J.D. Martinez, they would have been left with a DH who posted 0.5 WAR in 2024.

With nine fewer wins, the Dodgers don’t have the best record in the MLB and home field advantage during the playoffs. With nine fewer wins, they move to 89-73, the same record as the first-out Arizona Diamondbacks. Without Ohtani, the Dodgers probably won’t even be a playoff team this year.

So you can forgive Ohtani for going 2-for-19 in the 2024 World Series, especially when it wasn’t entirely clear whether he should have played even after Game 2, when a stolen base attempt left him writhing in pain in the dirt. He was later diagnosed with a minor subluxation and given the green light to continue playing, but his swing never looked quite right after the series arrived at Yankee Stadium, and earlier this week Ohtani underwent offseason surgery to solving the problem does not matter.

Ohtani has given everything he physically has this season, and he will receive his first World Series ring for it. It was an affirmation of the pitch the Dodgers gave him last winter, as he said when he was introduced as a Dodger:

Ohtani, like his teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto, has now won a World Series title, a Japan Series title and a World Baseball Classic title at the age of 30. This championship would be a pivotal moment in Japan, with their national hero reaching the pinnacle of his career just before 1pm local time on a working day.

And just think: Ohtani gets to pitch again next year.