Surprising absolutely no one, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge won the National League and American League MVP Awards, respectively, on Thursday night. The announcements capped two of the greatest seasons in recent baseball memory.

Ohtani put up a 54 HR-59 SB season, and Judge … well, Judge may have been an even better hitter than that in 2024. There wasn’t much debate here, evidenced by a unanimous vote for both of them.

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It would seem that both Ohtani and Judge have secured their places in baseball history. After all, they’re the two most famous baseball players in the world right now -- you might have caught them at the World Series, don’t forget about that. This isn’t even their first go-around as MVPs: This is Ohtani’s third trophy (second in a row, and in two different leagues), and Judge’s second. And it’s not like they’re going away anytime soon, either. Ohtani is signed with the Dodgers through the 2033 season, and Judge will be in the Bronx at least through 2031. We’ll be watching them, in their current uniforms, for a while.

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But history has a way of playing tricks on us, and our perceptions of it. For undeniable reasons specific to each player, it seems clear, when their careers are over, that their collective counting stats – the big, round numbers that we use to identify Hall of Famers – will be smaller than we might have expected. Thus, when future generations spend the decades after they retire looking back at them on Baseball-Reference and MLB.com, they might not realize just how great these players were … because those final totals won’t necessarily pop. This isn’t a reason to downgrade their careers, of course, no matter what happens moving forward. It’s a reason to appreciate them right now -- a chance to reflect on just how good their peaks really have been, and how lucky we are to get to watch them as they reach that point.

First off, Ohtani. Obviously, he is a special case. He is not only a unique player in the Majors, serving as a starting pitcher and a lineup linchpin, but his achievements are very much appreciable in the moment: He is literally the only player to have done what he is doing, at this level. But much of Ohtani’s appeal is wrapped up in that inherent risk, that tension between the miracle of what he’s doing and the fear that he won’t be able to do it forever. We have proof of that, of course: He didn’t pitch at all in 2024. It didn’t stop him from winning the MVP anyway.

But is it reasonable to expect Ohtani to continue pitching for the rest of his contract with the Dodgers? Through 2033? Probably not, right? And even if he does pitch for the next half-decade or so, it’s unlikely he’ll put up enough innings for his mound numbers to ever truly blow anyone away. For all his success so far -- before a second Tommy John surgery, it must be reminded -- he has thrown only 481 2/3 innings in MLB. For perspective, that’s fewer than such luminaries as Andrew Chafin, Griffin Canning, Dakota Hudson and T.J. McFarland. He’ll throw more, but he’s not even halfway to even, like, José Ureña and Marco Gonzales. Which means it’s going to be his hitting that makes the numbers add up.

There are inherent limitations there, too. Ohtani is 30 years old, turning 31 in July, and he “only” has 225 homers for his career. That’s eighth among active players to that point in their careers, just seven more than Anthony Rizzo and 10 more than Francisco Lindor. And most players don’t keep up the same pace in their 30s. While Ohtani hasn’t actually missed a lot of time at the plate to injury in recent years – he’s 15th in MLB in games played since 2021 – his two-way exploits likely do raise the risk of injuries that actually could harm his availability with the bat. That might make a milestone like 500 homers a lot more difficult to reach than it would seem right now.

Judge may have even more issues, considering he’s two years older than Ohtani with a spottier health record, not to mention the challenge of being 6-foot-7 and 282 pounds. Judge didn’t even reach the Majors until he was 24 years old and won Rookie of the Year at age 25. (Here is your reminder that Juan Soto just turned 26.) That late start has always made it difficult for Judge to reach the counting stats you’d think a guy who has hit at least 58 homers twice would be able to reach. (The truncated 2020 season hurts him, and Ohtani, and everyone from this era, here as well.)

This means Judge has “only” 315 homers and 1,026 hits; remember how shocked everybody was when he reached the 1,000-hit mark last year? Now, obviously, Judge can pick up those homers fast, including 157 of them over the past three seasons. But those came during his early 30s, and there is much historical worry to be had over how players his size age. Are we certain he’s going to make it to 500 homers? My colleague Andrew Simon tried to figure this out in August, and one estimate, via Bill James’ Favorite Toy tool, gave Judge an 82 percent chance of reaching 500, and 37 percent chance of reaching 600. Both of those figures, frankly, strike me as a little bit high. Either way: Judge’s number is probably going to end up lower than most people think based on his name, and reputation.

If I’ve learned anything over my years of writing about baseball, it’s that the further you get away from a player’s actual career, and what you watched during it, the more you rely on that stat sheet. This isn’t a bad thing: It’s why people finally came around to appreciating Bert Blyleven and Tim Raines well after their careers ended, in a way they didn’t when those guys were playing. But it also can make it so that you forget, in the haze of statistics, just how overwhelming and dominating a player was at his peak. (It’s why everybody who watched Dale Murphy felt like they were watching a Hall of Famer when they saw him, though his career numbers didn’t end up that impressive.)

Right now, it seems obvious that the best players of this era are Ohtani and Judge. But I wonder if that will be as obvious in 20 years, when all is said and done … and those career numbers fall behind those of guys like Soto, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado or whomever. That’s especially true for those who won’t remember watching Ohtani and Judge at their best.

This is not to say that these are not future Hall of Famers: Ohtani and Judge clearly are. But the only way to truly appreciate how transcendent they are right now is to watch them right now. Because ultimately, the career stats won’t do as much as they should to remind us.

These are otherworldly baseball players, at their peak, right now. We’re lucky to get to see it. We may be the only ones who, in the end, truly understand it.