For the nth time in his career, Shohei Ohtani showed what a remarkable individual he is, not because of his ability to both pitch and hit at an elite level or even his superb combination of power and speed on offense, but because of his ability to stay focused on the present.
He already has arguably the most extraordinary career in baseball history, and put an exclamation point on his current exceptional season with a singular performance, displaying a talent rarely talked about – his mental discipline.
On Thursday, Ohtani became the first player to reach 50 home runs and 50 steals in Major League Baseball with a 6-for-6, three-homer, two-steal, 10-RBI game.
Most remarkable, however, is that Ohtani has reached such milestones after setting course on a journey that few people in the professional baseball world thought was possible, and which some vocally opposed.
Because of his 100 mile-an-hour fastball, pro baseball men around the world had little interest in whether his power as a high school hitter would also play in the big leagues, believing the step up in difficulty would make two-way stardom unattainable.
It became possible through the turn of events following Ohtani’s 2012 announcement that he would go pro with an MLB team. This dissuaded 11 of Nippon Professional Baseball’s 12 teams from selecting him in that year’s draft, while the sole bidder faced an uphill task to keep him.
The Nippon Ham Fighters convinced him to stay, partly with a desperate offer no other team in America or Japan would make — a chance to both pitch and hit as a pro.
The Fighters’ plan, while a huge hit with the fans, was ridiculed mercilessly in Japan’s media by a legion of former stars, who preached that their own success had only been possible with endless practice, dedication, and focus.
The idea that anyone could succeed at pitching or hitting without 100 percent commitment to one or the other was heresy, and his Fighters manager, Hideki Kuriyama, endured frequent public criticism that his experiment was ruining Ohtani’s future.
But the doubters seriously underestimated Ohtani’s ability to meet the challenge, not only physically but mentally.
And while Kuriyama ignored the naysayers, Ohtani showed he could match his skipper’s ability to compartmentalize and keep doubts and criticism from interfering with what he was trying to accomplish.
Many took it as proof of the two-way plan’s failure when as a rookie in 2013, Ohtani batted just .238 with a 4.23 ERA as a pitcher. His raw ability on the mound was obvious, but his 19 extra-base hits as a batter were a more subtle indicator of quality.
For a teenage pro in Japan to have 19 extra-base hits against elite pro pitching, even with regular playing time, was a rare feat, but something Ohtani accomplished in just 189 at-bats.
Three years later, after his second “Babe Ruth season” of 10-plus pitching wins and 10 or more home runs, which saw him voted the Pacific League’s best pitcher and its top designated hitter, Ohtani was still criticized for not specializing and for employing so much weight training.
Even with Ohtani cranking out home runs at a rate matched by few past players his age in Japan, the doubters persisted.
“No MLB team is going to pay him millions of dollars and risk that pitching arm by letting him bat,” a veteran MLB scout said in the summer of 2017, echoing the majority opinion.
And though Ohtani was an unstoppable force in preseason batting practice in 2018 with the Los Angeles Angels, he struggled badly at the plate in preseason games until the quiet murmurs of naysayers became a crescendo.
National MLB writer Jeff Passan infamously wrote on March 10, 2018, a story headlined “The verdict is in on Shohei Ohtani’s bat and it’s not good.”
Away from the spotlight, however, Ohtani had been dealing with the problem. He sought help from Ichiro Suzuki, and worked on a new technique to time MLB pitches on the Angels training camp’s backlots, efforts that led to his 2018 rookie-of-the-year season.
On Sept. 5 that year, Ohtani was told he should have elbow ligament reconstruction surgery, but stayed focused in the moment later that day by going 4-for-4 with two home runs and a stolen base.
A year after a disastrous 2020 season, Ohtani yet again put doubters in their place, remapping his nutrition, training and approach, to deliver the first of four straight MVP-caliber seasons, including this year’s, which started with the news of his terrible betrayal by his closest collaborator.
In March, he learned that Ippei Mizuhara, his interpreter, personal assistant and friend, had embezzled millions of dollars from him to pay illegal gambling debts. That also cast a shadow on whether Ohtani himself had been gambling.
Ohtani’s response in the months following only reinforced the notion that his most unique quality might not be his physical abilities but the mental discipline needed to give 100 percent to one thing at a time.
And with the hype of his “chase” of a 50-50 season booming in our ears, Ohtani just did his thing and made the impossible seem somehow plausible.
