LOS ANGELES — The laws of human performance cannot contain Shohei Ohtani anymore, so it was only right that on Friday, neither could Dodger Stadium.
While he was two-hitting the team with the best record in the sport, after he clubbed the first leadoff home run as a pitcher in the history of the major leagues, as he was in the process of sending his team to the World Series to try to defend its 2024 title, Ohtani launched a cutter 469 feet to right-center field, over the wall and the stands and the pavilion roof and clear out of the ballpark.
By the time it landed, his teammates had stopped cheering and started laughing. The smiles barely left their faces for the next hour as they finished their charge to the pennant 5–1 over the Brewers to cap a four-game sweep of the National League Championship Series.
In the most important game of Ohtani’s career, he produced simply the most magnificent game anyone has ever played. When he strode off the mound after six-plus innings to an instrumental version of “Jesus Christ, Superstar,” it felt understated. (Unfortunately, in his fourth at-bat, he hit a third home run—making him the 11th player to do so in postseason history, and the first to do so in between striking out 10 batters—rather than sacrificing.)
“This is just a performance that I’ve just never seen,” manager Dave Roberts said afterward. “No one’s ever seen something like this. I’m still in awe right now of Shohei.”
He had the three highest exit velocities (116.9 mph, 116.5 mph, 113.6 mph), the three top distances (469 feet, 446 feet, 427 feet) and 11 top pitch velocities (ranging from 100.3 mph to 99.2 mph) of the game.
And in the week leading up to it, most of the discussion about Ohtani was about whether he could do this at all. During a regular season that will almost certainly win him his third straight Most Valuable Player award and his fourth in five years, he began ramping up as a pitcher following his second elbow reconstruction. On the days he simply hit, he batted .285 with a 1.021 OPS. On the days he pitched, those figures were .214 and .848. (He had a 2.87 ERA in 47 innings, so the Dodgers were willing to make it work.) The problem became more acute in October, as he made his first postseason appearances as a pitcher. During the National League Division Series and the first three games of the NLCS, Ohtani was 3-for-29 with 14 strikeouts.
The team pushed back his NLCS start—he was expected to go in Game 2, so he could have a day off after the outing—to Game 4 while insisting the move had nothing to do with his at-bat quality. Still, officials and teammates noted that his swing decisions seemed worse and speculated that he was having trouble compartmentalizing. Game 4 began to feel less like a chance to advance to the grandest stage and more like a referendum on playing two positions at the highest level.
In the days before the game, Ohtani grew irritated, both by his results and by the questions about them. And indeed, did anyone ever ask Picasso if his drawing was interfering with his painting or Newton if inventing calculus had distracted him from discovering gravity?
“We’re not going to win the World Series with a performance like that,” manager Dave Roberts lamented before the NLCS began.
“The other way to say it,” Ohtani pointed out in response in Japanese, according to the Los Angeles Times, “Is that if I hit, we will win.”
This week, Ohtani mostly channeled his frustration into preparation. He spent the hours before Friday’s game enmeshed in his usual schedule, working through his pitching warmup before heading to the batting cage roughly an hour before the game. He watched the Mariners–Blue Jays game in between cuts. “Same guy,” says hitting coach Robert Van Scoyoc. “I don’t want to call it robotic, but very routine-oriented.”
Still, Roberts said, “All those [doubts], I think, were fuel to his fire.” Clad in a dry NL champions hat and T-shirt to replace the ones his teammates had soaked in alcohol, Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton, “It was my turn to be able to perform.”
In the hazy, champagne-filled den of the team’s 2024 championship celebration—10 months after the Dodgers signed the most talented player in baseball history to a 10-year, $700 million contract—Ohtani approached club president Stan Kasten and grinned. “Nine more to go,” said the player.
The Dodgers will enter the World Series, which will begin a week from Friday against either the Mariners or the Blue Jays, as heavy favorites. Their MLB-record $329 million payroll—financed in part by Ohtani’s decision to take most of his salary as deferred money, giving the Dodgers something of a credit card—has done enough this October to mitigate Ohtani’s slump.
Ohtani’s pitching line—six innings, two hits, three walks, 10 strikeouts—was actually only the third most impressive on his team this series. In Game 1, Blake Snell delivered eight one-hit, no-walk, 10-strikeout, scoreless innings; in Game 2, Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched a three-hit, one-run complete game. They became the first pair of teammates to finish the eighth inning on consecutive October nights since Madison Bumgarner and Tim Lincecum did it for the 2010 Giants in Games 4 and 5 of the World Series. And the lineup, keyed by first baseman Freddie Freeman and catcher Will Smith, was able to make the pitchers’ outings hold up.
Still, it is Ohtani’s ability to completely take over a game the way he did on Friday that will carry them as far as they go. And they can certainly win the World Series with a few more performances like that.
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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Shohei Ohtani Plays Most Magnificent Game of All Time to Lead Dodgers to Pennant .
