The Ohtani Effect: Comparing the Value of Pitching and Hitting in Baseball

shohei Otani is the best player in all of baseball or at least that's the popular consensus among fans and baseball writers but how good is he actually how valuable is Otani as a pitcher and a hitter and how does he compare to Legendary players of past eras what can we expect from Otani going forward and is he truly worth the hype or is he just a media darling due to the Rarity of his two-way play Let's dive into the statistics otania's posted thus far in his time in the MLB and compare him to today's other Superstars as well as past Legends when we're done you can decide whether Otani really is the most valuable player in all of baseball right now or whether he's wrongly overshadowing the likes of Aaron judge Mike Trout Jacob degrom and others MLB Network just released their list of the top 100 players right now and who they voted as number one came as no surprise it was shohei Otani the Japanese two-way Superstar of the Los Angeles Angels some fans would have preferred Slugger Aaron judge in the number one spot after he beat Otani for 2022 MVP and broke the American League record for single season home runs but the general consensus is that ohtani is the right pick as greatest judges right now and with all due respect to Trout's long-standing status as the best player in baseball ohtani is simply the most valuable overall when you combine his excellent hitting with Elite pitching as good as judge and troutar defensively the argument goes they just can't make as many outs as Otani can on the mound shohei Otani is almost as if Juan Soto could pitch like Garrett Cole and how could that not be the most valuable player in baseball Otani is almost a walking breathing buy one get one free as a baseball player that is until he reaches free agency when he might become the first 600 million dollar player in the history of MLB yup he might just be that valuable but is he worth it do his stats really back up such a projection let's take a look in 2022 Aaron judge let MLB in wins above replacement with 10.6 and one Al MVP coming in second in both overall War and almvp voting was of course Otani he racked up 9.6 wins above replacement mostly behind his Stellar pitching from which he gained 6.1 of those points making him the third most valuable pitcher in all of 2022 following only Dylan cease of the Chicago White Sox and National League Cy Young winner Sandy alcantra ohtani threw 166 Innings averaged nearly 12 strikeouts per nine innings and finished the season with an era of 233 and a FIP of 2.4 that's an elite campaign for a starting pitcher making Otani at least a top 10 starter for the year he finished fourth in the American Cy Young voting and all in all had an outstanding season on the mound his hitting took something of a step back from his incredible 2021 campaign as he only racked up 3.8 offensive war in 2022 putting him somewhere at the back end of the top 50 offensively for the year still that's a good season by just about anyone's standards especially considering he matched 34 home runs knocked in 95 runs and ended with a WRC of 142 putting him 42 points ahead of the average MLB hitter and the funny thing is his 2022 campaign is a sort of inverse of his 2021 performance in which he was one of the League's very best hitters mashing 46 home runs but only in the top 25 of pitchers it was interesting to see him go back and forth between the 2021 and 2022 season one year in which his hitting did most of the heavy lifting for his value and another year in which his pitching stood out more than his hitting it's something Baseball fans have almost begun to take for granted but we need to remember just how special and different Otani really is one year he hits like Juan Soto and pitches like Julio Arias the next year he pitches like Luis Castillo and hits like Kyle Tucker that's not something we've ever seen before in baseball or any sport it's like if Patrick Mahomes played middle linebacker so will Otani be worth a record-breaking contract he will almost certainly receive when he becomes a free agent after the 2023 season let's take a look at one of the most astounding statistics about ohtani and let you decide according to stat head shohei Otani is 7th all-time in Ops in high leverage situations in other words when it's clutch time Otani is the seventh best hitter of all time of players with a minimum of 300 such plate appearances he also boasts the third highest slugging percentage of any hitter in high level situations in fact he's the only current player in the top 10 including the likes of his teammate Mike Trout Aaron judge Juan Soto Jordana Alvarez and so on that means of all current baseball players Otani is the absolute one you want hitting for your team in a high leverage situation so all right that's pretty impressive the best clutch hitter in baseball right now and seventh all time that's legendary stuff on its own but that's not all you might want to sit down for this shohei Otani 7th best clutch hitter of all time at this point in his career has the lowest Ops against in high leverage situations of any pitcher ever in the history of baseball that means Otani is the best clutch pitcher and the best clutch hitter in all of baseball right now that's simply unheard of it's already amazing enough that Otani pitches and hits at the Major League level but to do so this well and to be the best in the league in clutch situations on both sides of the ball is just outrageous when you hear a stat like that it makes sense that the only way Otani could lose an MVP race is by judge breaking a record which has lasted for 60 years for as long as Otani plays in the American League the AL MVP belongs to him unless someone else does something historic and extraordinary like judge did in 2022 because if you think about it everything Otani does is historic we've simply never seen a player do this except for maybe Babe Ruth a hundred years ago so is he worth 500 million or even 600 million dollars well looked at a certain way you could argue he's worth whatever an elite designated hitter is worth as well as whatever an elite starting pitcher is worth combined You could argue he should make about what your Don Alvarez makes plus about what Max Scherzer makes some might call that an exaggeration but statistically it's not that crazy to imagine shohei Otani is a one-of-a-kind baseball player who's easily the most electric figure MLB has seen in a long time there's no telling about how his legacy might shape up if he manages to stay healthy and continues performing at the level he's at now he's almost definitely going to break the record for most money guaranteed in free agency we've ever seen in baseball he'll probably collect several more MVP Trophies and who knows it's not unreasonable to think we might witness this season where one man wins both a Cy Young Award and a Silver Slugger Award some fans might already be used to what Otani can do and might think the media makes too much of him at the expense of other deserving Superstars and that might be a little fair but can you blame them Otani is special a once in a century kind of athlete and we should relish every moment we get to witness him performing in the league that doesn't mean that we can't appreciate the other greats of otanizera from Judge to degrom to Soto to tatis but simply put Otani shines brighter than them all and will probably go down in the record books as the most exciting player of his time even if his teammate Mike Trout goes down as the goat so what do you think does the media make too much of the Otani narrative or is he worth the hype should he win MVP every season unless someone breaks a record or is that just over the top Otani obsession foreign

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Keywords: HIGHLIGHTS, ESPN, MLB HIGHLIGHTS, BASEBALL HIGHLIGHTS, MLB, baseball, player bios, baseball highlights, MLB best plays, baseball best plays, baseball statistics, baseball funny videos, MLB network, shohei ohtani, shohei ohtani pitching and hitting, major league baseball, shohei ohtani pitching, ohtani pitching, baseball bits, the year of ohtani, baseball 9 pitching, shohei ohtani hitting, ohtani hitting, ohtani

Id: 5Ml46nJgyzI

Length: 7min 11sec (431 seconds)

Published: Sat Mar 18 2023