Of Course This Is How Shohei Ohtani Makes History

In retrospect, of course he was going to do it. On Thursday, Shohei Ohtani became the first player in history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in the same season, and he did it loudly. His 6-for-6, three-homer, two-steal game would be among the best single-game lines by any player all year even if it hadn’t simultaneously helped him achieve a feat that no one has ever done before. Sometimes you just have to marvel at the greatness.

Ohtani wasn’t supposed to be at his peak this year. He’s rehabbing from UCL repair surgery and thus not pitching. His two-way prowess has always been part of the Ohtani mystique, and 2024 felt like a warmup for next year, his first fully operational campaign with the Dodgers. But instead, Ohtani reached new heights as a hitter this year. He’s already set career bests for every counting stat imaginable. He’d have highs in every rate stat too, if it weren’t for his offensive breakthrough in 2023 (.304/.412/.654 for a 179 wRC+).

Ohtani always felt like a threat to hit 50 homers – he hit 46 in 2021 and 44 last year — but 50 steals felt like a pipe dream; he’d swiped only 86 total bases in 716 games before this year, and even with last year’s rule changes that increased stolen base attempts and success rates, he swiped only 20 bags in 135 games.

Early in 2024, that trend continued. Across his first 20 games, he stole three bases and hit four homers. No one wondered whether the home runs would come – obviously they would. He also smashed 10 doubles in those games en route to a 177 wRC+. The power is evident every time you watch him play. But steals? Despite his blazing speed, they’d never really been part of his game, and nothing about the start of this year indicated a change on that front.

During his next 20 games, he batted a ludicrous .364/.462/.701, socked seven home runs, and stole six bases. That brought his season total to 11 homers and nine steals in 40 games, a 162-game pace of 44 and 36. Then his hits started to leave the yard at an even greater rate and his steals stalled a bit. By June 30, Ohtani had blasted 26 homers and stolen 16 bags in 82 games, good for a 162-game pace of 51 and 31. Fifty home runs was reasonable, but 50 steals? It didn’t seem to be in the realm of possibility.

One thing I’ve learned in the last half decade, though, is that you doubt Ohtani at your own risk. He beat colossal odds and upset preconceived notions across the sport when he established himself as a two-way fixture in the majors. Scouts thought he couldn’t hit. Then they thought he couldn’t keep doing it. They thought he’d wear down. They thought the first major arm injury would turn him into a full-time hitter. None of these predictions was correct. Why couldn’t he start stealing bases at will?

That’s exactly what happened. His 16 steals through June 30 ranked 11th in the majors, so it’s not as though he was a disappointment on the basepaths, but it was just another amazing thing that Shohei could do when he felt like it, nothing more than that.

Well, that’s what we thought anyway. Over his next 12 games, which took him to the All Star break, he stole seven more. Then he started to steal in bunches. He swiped three bags on August 3, two on August 14, and another two on August 17. He stole 15 bases in August – about as many as he swiped in the first half of the season!

All of the sudden, 50/50 was on the menu. And it never came off it, because he kept his foot on the gas pedal. Ohtani leads baseball in stolen bases in the second half of this season. He’d been flirting with a 50-homer pace for most of the year; the sudden influx of steals was all he needed. To understand how quickly things changed for Ohtani, I like looking at this graph:

The diagonal line is the required pace to get 50 of a given stat in a full season. As you can see, the steals side of the equation was very much in doubt until he got going – and it’s been smooth sailing ever since.

Ohtani didn’t exactly coast over the finish line, either. He’s been roughly on pace to hit 50/50 for the last few weeks, even after an oh-fer in a four-game stretch in Atlanta. When I ran a simulation Thursday morning to attempt to predict which day he’d get to 50/50, the most likely outcome pointed toward the end of this week or the start of next week. Then Ohtani produced perhaps the greatest offensive day of all time: 6-for-6 with three homers, two doubles, 10 RBI, and two steals.

That’s 17 total bases and no outs. Uh yeah, that’s pretty good. Two steals for good measure? How do you even steal two bases in a game where you have only one single and no walks? How do you do it when half of your plate appearances are home runs? It’s outrageous. I love this note from Opta Stats:

Since RBI became official in 1920, only one MLB player has had, over the course of his entire career (same game or not),

a game with 10+ RBI
a game with 6+ hits
a game with 5+ XBH
a game with 3+ HR
a game with 2+ SB

That one player is Shohei Ohtani. He did all of it today. pic.twitter.com/njXOmwHKnm

— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) September 20, 2024

It’s hard to say much more than that, really. Ohtani didn’t just reach the 50-homer, 50-steal mark by grinding out the last few tallies one at a time, inch by painstaking inch. He saved his best for last, putting up literally the best offensive game of his career, and perhaps the best game of anyone’s career, to set the record.

It was his first multi-homer game with a steal all year. It was only the fourth of his career. And it wasn’t two homers and one steal, like the other three had been – it was three homers and two steals. No one’s had that kind of game before, never mind all the other amazing parts about it.

What else can you say? Ohtani is peerless, completely without comparison. He might be the greatest to ever do it. He’s certainly the most singular. Of course he got to this seemingly unreachable milestone with a seemingly impossible offensive outburst. That’s just how he’s always done things.

This game was so impressive that I wanted more. I decided to ask my Ohtani 50/50 prediction model whether he could get to 60/60. I tweaked a few variables, added to his home run rate, and eliminated rest days. It said, essentially, “lol no.” In one million simulations, he never hit nine homers and stole nine bases in the same nine-game stretch. Even Ohtani might not be up for that one.

On the other hand, his chances of getting to 55/55 are surprisingly reasonable. Without any adjustments to my pre-existing model, I give him an 8% chance of hitting quadruple nickels – 55 twice. If I use his second-half pace as a guide instead of our projections, it’s more like 11%. It’s unlikely but doable, which is more than I can say for the game we just witnessed.

But enough about math. Enough about what Ohtani might do to make his feat even more impressive. It’s already a staggering achievement, set in a way that no one else can match. What a player. What a game. What a season. When Ohtani puts his mind to it, anything is possible.