To try and keep this separate from all of the other team centric discussions here, I think it'll be fun to watch this as the season continues. Right now he's been the best starter in the NL by a wide margin, he's given up only one earned run so far this season, BUT he's done this in only 4 starts while most other starters are at 5-6 starts already. This is likely a trend that will continue putting the top starters around 32-34 starts and Ohtani at around 24 by the end of the year unless the Dodgers lose a bunch of starters and ask Ohtani to start going every 5 days.

A couple of things stand out for me, first, if he wins the Cy Young, he's now at the top of any list of best baseball players of all time. I mean, I put him ABOVE Babe Ruth if he pulls this off. He'd have a 50/50 year under his belt, two 50 homer years, two seasons hitting above .300 when hardly anyone hits over .300 and a Cy Young on the mound... it's all just incomprehensible that one guy could be the best pitcher and hitter in the game. Doing it also likely means he wins his 5th MVP award.

He's unlikely to carry a 0.38 ERA deep into the season, but if he does, then we can also talk about Bob Gibson's 1968 1.12 ERA as the live ball record or Doc Gooden's 1.53 if we want to limit it to after the mound was lowered. But as mentioned earlier, if he only starts like 24 games, he wouldn't qualify as a starter for the ERA title. So lots of stuff to watch as the season heads into summer.

I heard what Counsell said, but I think he's off on his criticism here. Nothing stops any of the other position players from pitching, it's just that none of them are good enough to do it. So really all teams have 26 guys who could theoretically pitch. The rule limits you to carrying a specific amount of pure pitchers.

The rule regarding Ohtani that I don't like is where he can stay in as the DH even after he's done pitching. That one is totally against the spirit of the game as it's existed for over 100 years. Feels very little league to me.

And don't forget he gets extra warm up time that no other pitcher gets. MLB wants him as a 2 way player bad enough that they made rules just for him.

It's hard for me to put a guy above Ruth. When Ruth came into the league, the career record for home runs was 110. He hit 714. Proportionally, that would be like a guy coming into the league and striking out 35,000 batters in his career 7x what Nolan did.





No athlete has ever dominated their sport to the degree and for the duration that Ruth did. And he was a great pitcher who just stopped getting used as a pitcher. He was 94-46 with a 2.28 ERA.

I don't think you can just make proportional claims like that. It's true that Ruth was a beast that was far and away above his peers, but he also did that at a time when guys were not really professionals in the same way they were even 20 years later when Ted Williams was playing. Ruth kind of created the paradigm of what a power hitter was and how that led to winning. By the end of his career there were other sluggers putting up massive numbers as well.

It's obviously stupid to say a guy is better than Ruth, because comparing across generations is difficult. But I think if a guy in 2026 can win an MVP purely as a hitter and then also win a Cy Young then they force that conversation over best baseball player ever. If it was just best hitter ever, the edge is still with Ruth, but Ohtani is still doing both and that significantly strengthens his argument.

AustinAg2K said:

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AggieEP said:

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Nothing stops any of the other position players from pitching

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Actually there is a specific rule that stops position players from pitching unless it is a blowout game or in extra innings. There is nothing that prevents a pitcher from playing in the field, so Ohtani should count as a pitcher.

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Your comment is factually incorrect, if a team wishes to start the process of qualifying a guy as a 2-way player they can pitch anytime in any game. Sure there is a rule about walking your backup short stop out there to throw 50 MPH lobs, but that's not what I was talking about. Nothing stops any other team from using a guy like how the Dodgers use Ohtani. If the Royals want Caglione to be a 2-way they don't have to get blown out a bunch.

My whole point was that Counsell was whining about an advantage that he could also take advantage of if he had the personnel. It's not a Dodgers only rule. He should draft and develop his own guy for this role if he's really convinced it's an edge roster wise to have that extra pitcher.

astros4545 said:

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Ohtani is also a generational gambler

Trifecta

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In a just world he'd be banned from the game like PeteRose

heavens11 said:

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astros4545 said:

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Ohtani is also a generational gambler

Trifecta

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In a just world he'd be banned from the game like PeteRose

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Candidly speaking, that's probably the reason I cant give him much credit for his on the field performance. He seems like an a-hole who got away with doing something really illegal by making some other guy his fall guy and he plays for the team whose logo is next to the word ******* in the dictionary.

He pitched again, 6 innings 1 run allowed but took the loss. ERA ballooned from 0.38 to 0.60.

EliteElectric said:

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So let me get this straight- Ohtani is widely known as the humble good guy by people in and around the league and was universally found innocent of any wrongdoing in the gambling case, labeled the victim of theft even, but some of y'all have conflated that into "an a-hole who got away with doing something really illegal by making some other guy his fall guy"? That's pretty rich and shines a bright light on your Dodger hate and that's pretty much it. I don't really know any non asterisks fans that hate Ohtani

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I'm just ignoring them.

Ohtani is an unbelievable player and I'm going to enjoy watching him. Even if he has a gambling problem, I don't really care. The Astros traded for a guy while he was under investigation for domestic violence, so pretty rich to see their fans cast stones at Ohtani.

Ohtani took another loss, but was once again masterful on the mound against the Astros.

Importantly he got 7 innings in, if he's going to qualify as a starter he's going to need some 7 and 8 inning outings.

Shohei's stat line right now is ridiculous. Top in nearly all categories and getting no run support.

EliteElectric said:

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Shohei's stat line right now is ridiculous. Top in nearly all categories and getting no run support.

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Yeah, when you look at his game log he's gone at least 6 innings in all 6 starts and only given up 4 ERs all year yet he's sitting at 2-2. I think he basically would be a guaranteed winner of the CY if he finished at like 18-2 even if his innings are lower than Skenes and Burns, but his path to the CY is a bit tougher if he's like 9-8 even with elite peripherals. Hopefully (yuck) the Dodgers give him more support going forward so he can stack some wins.

I like the fact that Ohtani basically said his goal this year was to win the CY even though 2023 was his last year as a full time pitcher and he's basically been peak deGrom so far this year and in position to make a run at it. This is after 2 years ago just deciding it'd be fun to go 50/50 as a hitter and doing it. I really think that if he wanted to, he could win a gold glove in RF as well. He's a baseball cyborg.

If he keeps this up, he'll pass Babe for pitching WAR this year. And he's going to pass him in half as many innings which is pretty incredible. At that point we can unambiguously say that he's the best hitter of all time that also pitched at least 500 innings.

AggieEP said:

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EliteElectric said:

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Shohei's stat line right now is ridiculous. Top in nearly all categories and getting no run support.

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Yeah, when you look at his game log he's gone at least 6 innings in all 6 starts and only given up 4 ERs all year yet he's sitting at 2-2. I think he basically would be a guaranteed winner of the CY if he finished at like 18-2 even if his innings are lower than Skenes and Burns, but his path to the CY is a bit tougher if he's like 9-8 even with elite peripherals. Hopefully (yuck) the Dodgers give him more support going forward so he can stack some wins.

I like the fact that Ohtani basically said his goal this year was to win the CY even though 2023 was his last year as a full time pitcher and he's basically been peak deGrom so far this year and in position to make a run at it. This is after 2 years ago just deciding it'd be fun to go 50/50 as a hitter and doing it. I really think that if he wanted to, he could win a gold glove in RF as well. He's a baseball cyborg.

If he keeps this up, he'll pass Babe for pitching WAR this year. And he's going to pass him in half as many innings which is pretty incredible. At that point we can unambiguously say that he's the best hitter of all time that also pitched at least 500 innings.

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He's already playing in an era of superior competition and training methods so to me Shohei has already surpassed Ruth.