After his astonishing 2025 season, many baseball fans would consider Shohei Ohtani to be the best current player in the MLB. Some even say he is the best player in MLB history. While these are both opinions that can be argued against, his talent is indisputable (even by San Francisco Giants fans).
Prior to joining the MLB, Ohtani played professionally in Japan. In 2012, he was drafted first overall by the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, a team in NPB. Although he wanted to go straight to MLB, he was convinced to stay after being promised the opportunity to be both a hitter and a pitcher.
After five seasons on this team, Ohtani’s pitching and hitting skills improved greatly, leading to him being named MVP and gaining a national hero status. This was all before the age of 25 and long before what is considered the “height” of his career.
Ohtani began his MLB career in 2018 after being drafted by the Los Angeles Angels. After this season, he was named the “American League Rookie of the Year.” During 2019 and 2020, while still being a promising player, Ohtani’s seasons were disrupted by injury. After a short break, he came back stronger in his 2021 season, becoming the first player elected to the All-Star Game as both a pitcher and a hitter and winning his first American League MVP award.
He kept the same momentum in his 2022 season, and in 2023, he won the World Baseball Classic MVP after striking out his own teammate, Mike Trout, in the final game. The 2023 season was his last time playing with the Angels, as in 2024, he signed a 10-year, $700,000,000 contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers.
This season, Ohtani won his third American League MVP award, became the first player in MLB history to hit fifty home runs and steal fifty bases in the same season, and brought the Dodgers to a World Series win. All of this is what led to a game in the 2025 season, which many people are calling “the best performance in MLB history.”
There were many notable moments throughout Ohtani’s 2025 season: he won many awards (MVP of the NLCS, NL MVP, etc.), broke the Dodgers’ single-season home run record, hit a home run in eighteen different ballparks, set a new Dodgers record with one hundred forty-six runs scored, stole twenty bases, and won his second World Series title.
While these are all very impressive accomplishments, nothing may beat his performance on October 17, 2025. On this day, he hit three home runs and pitched six shutout innings with ten strikeouts. This makes him the first pitcher to ever hit three home runs in a postseason game. Even disregarding the fact that this performance is what brought the Dodgers to the World Series, Ohtani demonstrated unparalleled two-way dominance.
Ohtani’s ability to excel in both pitching and hitting is what makes his talent undeniable. Feats such as his own have not been seen since Babe Ruth. While people can argue that there are players who are greater than Shohei Ohtani, there is no arguing that his talent is generational.
