Shohei Otani.
Credit: Erik Drost (licensed under CC BY 2.0)

With baseball’s All-Star Game scheduled for Tuesday evening, the first half of the Major League Baseball (MLB) season is in the books. One player has already etched a historic performance in 2021, drawing comparisons to none other than the great Babe Ruth. That player is Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Angels. Ohtani has earned the nickname “Shotime” for his dazzling play at the plate, on the base paths, and even on the mound.

Ohtani is a two-way player—that is, a player who excels at both hitting and pitching. In the higher levels of professional baseball, most pitchers are highly specialized in that role at the expense of poor hitting. However, Ohtani has excelled at both during his career. He is also one of the fastest baserunners in MLB. Ohtani stands 6 feet 4 inches (193 centimeters) tall and weighs 210 pounds (95 kilograms). He bats left-handed and throws right-handed. He is a starting pitcher, pitching approximately every five days. During games in which he does not pitch, he serves as the Angels’ designated hitter (DH). A designated hitter bats during a game but does not play in the field.

In 2018, Ohtani’s first season with the Angels, he went 4-2 with a 3.31 earned run average (ERA), also collecting 22 home runs, 10 stolen bases, and a .285 batting average. He earned the American League Rookie of the Year award with his performance. Ohtani suffered an elbow injury at the end of the 2018 season that required surgery. His recovery left him unable to pitch in 2019, but he served as the Angels’ designated hitter for much of the year. He suffered a knee injury in September 2019 that also required surgery. Ohtani struggled through his recovery and a schedule disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. He reinjured his elbow after pitching in just two games.

A fully healthy Ohtani made a historic performance in the first half of the 2021 season. As a pitcher, Ohtani went 4-1 with a 3.49 ERA. He hit 33 home runs, stole 12 bases, and posted a .279 average. He hit well even during a period when offensive statistics were down across the Major Leagues.

Early in his career, Ohtani did not bat in the games he pitched. Another player would be used as the designated hitter to bat in his place. In 2021, the Angels manager Joe Maddon declined to include a designated hitter in many games in which Ohtani pitched, letting Ohtani bat for himself. Such a move was virtually unheard of, as the designated hitter rule was designed to replace the pitcher with a stronger offensive player at the plate. Ohtani was selected to the 2021 MLB All-Star Game as both a pitcher and a DH. It was the first time a player was named an All-Star as both a pitcher and a hitter. Ohtani also became the first pitcher invited to compete in the Home Run Derby, a showcase of MLB’s most powerful hitters. His exceptional two-way production was comparable only to that of Ruth, who was a two-way player during parts of the 1918 and 1919 seasons.

Ohtani was born July 5, 1994, in Oshu, Japan. His father played baseball and his mother played badminton. Shohei started playing baseball at a young age. He remained near his hometown to attend Hanamaki Higashi High School. There, he developed into the top-ranked baseball prospect in Japan. Ohtani was drafted by the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), Japan’s highest professional baseball league, in 2013. He was one of the hardest-throwing pitchers and fastest runners in NPB. His batting initially lagged behind his pitching, but he produced an outstanding offensive season in 2016, hitting 22 home runs and batting .322 over 104 games.

After the end of the 2017 NPB season, Ohtani requested that the Nippon-Ham Fighters make him available to MLB teams. Under an agreement between MLB and NPB, Japanese players under 25 years of age could only sign a minor-league MLB contract and earn a league-minimum salary. Ohtani, who was 23 at the time, thus gave up the opportunity to negotiate a large MLB contract in order to enter the league at a younger age. Most of the 30 MLB teams offered to sign Ohtani. Ohtani accepted a contract from the Los Angeles Angels.