Is it possible we haven't seen apex Ohtani yet?

Is it possible we haven't seen apex Ohtani yet?

March 23rd, 2023

Based on the sheer magnitude of 's contributions these past two seasons, it’s really unfair to expect him to do more.

But what if he could?

Ohtani is an AL MVP Award winner, and he was named MVP of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, too, after helping Japan win it all. Fittingly, he put the finishing touches on Japan's triumph by striking out Angels teammate to close out the championship game against Team USA.

With 9 WAR in 2021 and 9.6 WAR last year, Ohtani is on a historic run of dominance -- he could become just the eighth player in the Modern Era (since 1900) to produce 9+ WAR (per Baseball-Reference) in three straight seasons, joining six Hall of Famers (, , , , and ) and , MLB’s all-time home run leader.

And that doesn’t even capture the novelty of it all, what with Ohtani’s ability to be an ace pitcher and elite slugger at the same time.

However, with all that being said, it’s entirely possible we haven’t seen Ohtani’s best season yet. Here’s what the apex version of the Angels’ two-way superstar might look like.

Hitting: 45+ HR, 5+ WAR?

Ohtani’s 2022 offensive performance, while still excellent, was a step down from the previous season. After producing 46 homers and a .965 OPS (157 OPS+) over 639 plate appearances in 2021, Ohtani had 34 home runs and an .875 OPS (145 OPS+) across 666 PAs last season.

However, Ohtani’s hitting skills remained top notch across the board, as evidenced by his percentile ranks in these key Statcast metrics.

  • Hard-hit rate: 92nd percentile
  • Barrel rate: 98th percentile
  • Expected SLG: 99th percentile
  • Expected wOBA: 98th percentile

Though he did experience drops in each of those areas from 2021 to 2022, the biggest difference between the two years wasn’t how well he was hitting the ball, but rather where he was directing his best contact.

Ohtani had MLB’s largest drop in pull rate last season, going from 46.6% to 36%. Just 23 of his 72 barrels (31.9%) -- batted balls with the optimal combination of exit velocity and launch angle, typically resulting in homers and extra-base hits -- came to the pull side. He homered on 14 of the 23. In 2021, 40 of his 78 barrels (51.3%) were pulled and 24 left the park.

Ohtani has power to all fields, but his pulled barrels typically have gone for homers at a higher rate than his barrels hit straightaway or to the opposite field.

Ohtani's home run rate by barrel direction, 2021-22

  • Pulled: 60.3% (38 of 63)
  • Straightaway: 50.9% (29 of 57)
  • Opposite: 33.3% (10 of 30)

An increase in pull rate could be all he needs to get back across the 40-homer mark in 2023.

Ohtani finished last season with 3.4 WAR as a position player, but he was a 5-win position player in 2021 (4.9, to be exact). We’ll keep that number in mind as we look at the pitching leap he made in 2022.

Pitching: Sub-2.00 ERA, 6+ WAR?

While Ohtani regressed a bit at the plate in 2022, his mound work was better than ever, building on the improvements he made in the summer of 2021.

Ohtani was prone to wildness early in his career, walking more than 13% of the batters he faced over his first 24 career starts, which spanned parts of four seasons due to injuries. But something clicked for the right-hander in July 2021, and he ended the year with an 11-start stretch in which he walked just nine batters (3.3% walk rate) and posted a 2.82 ERA and a 3.31 FIP.

Ohtani not only continued to limit walks in 2022 (6.7% walk rate) but also increased his strikeout rate to a career-high 33.2% while recording a 2.33 ERA and a 2.40 FIP over 166 innings -- 36 1/3 more than he threw the previous year.

He was among MLB's most improved pitchers in each of these key areas from 2021 to 2022 (ranks are out of 228 qualifying pitchers):

With the increase in volume and the improvement in performance, Ohtani bumped his pitching WAR total from 4.1 to 6.2 year over year.

But even that number arguably doesn’t represent Ohtani’s true potential on the mound. For the second straight season, he made dramatic strides as the year wore on. Over his final 19 starts in 2022, he recorded a 1.67 ERA and a 2.03 FIP.

Ohtani’s trajectory as a pitcher has ticked upward along with the usage rate of his “sweeper”-style slider. The graph below depicts his sweeper usage on a monthly basis and shows how he began to use it more in the second half of 2021, then continued to increase his usage of the pitch in 2022, crossing the 40% threshold for the first time in July and staying there the rest of the season.

Ohtani’s sweeper was MLB’s second-most valuable pitch in 2022, tied with ’s changeup and behind ’s slider.

He further expanded his already diverse repertoire with the introduction of a sinker out of nowhere in the middle of last season. The pitch has the same velocity as his high-octane four-seamer but drops 8 more inches vertically and breaks 13 more inches horizontally on average. He didn’t throw it much at first but was using it more than 14% of the time by September.

Point is, Ohtani is seemingly still evolving as a pitcher. But even if he doesn’t improve any more, he's already demonstrated the ability to be a 6+ WAR arm.

If we could somehow take the best version of Ohtani as a hitter and as a pitcher and mash them together, he could be worth upwards of 11 WAR, which isn’t something that happens all that often.

The rarity of the 11+ WAR season

The last player to record 11+ WAR in a season was Bonds (11.8) in 2002, though a few players have come close in recent years -- had 10.5 in 2012 and 2016, had 10.7 in 2018 and had 10.6 last year.

Just how rare is an 11-WAR season historically? There have been 49 of them by 33 different players (including 26 Hall of Famers) in the Modern Era; 43 of those seasons came in 1975 or earlier.

Only five players (six total seasons) have done it since 1976.

Players with an 11-WAR season since 1976:

  • Barry Bonds: 2001, 2002
  • Pedro Martinez: 2000
  • Roger Clemens: 1997
  • Cal Ripken Jr.: 1991
  • Dwight Gooden: 1985

Ohtani has already shown what his version of an 11 WAR campaign might look like. Now it's just a matter of putting it all together for one epic season.