Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani will go down as one of the greatest to ever pick up a baseball.
The way he is revered across the sport — both as a hitter with three (and soon to be four) MVP awards, and as a pitcher who owns a career 3.00 ERA — has significant weight, but president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman believes that Ohtani is still underrated.
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“I’ve said this a lot. I think he’s underrated,” said Friedman. “I just don’t think the human brain can comprehend what he does and how difficult it is and how elite he is at both — and the passion he has for hitting and the passion he has for pitching. It doesn’t seem like there’s enough passion to go around. But there is with him.”
To be an elite baseball player, or even a professional baseball player at any level requires a serious amount of dedication to the craft and passion for doing the little things each day. That must be doubled, or at least significantly increased when someone is both pitching and hitting at a remarkable rate.
Ohtani has a 2.87 ERA this season through 47 innings of work, striking out 62 batters and walking just nine. Something that is perhaps equally as impressive is how he recovered from a September 2023 Tommy John revision surgery, played an MVP-caliber season in 2024, tore his labrum and required surgery on the opposite arm, and made his way back to the mound in a Dodgers uniform by June of 2025.
At the plate, Ohtani leads MLB in runs with 146, leads the National League in slugging percentage (.622) and OPS (1.014), and hit 55 home runs, his personal best in MLB, and the third-most overall in MLB.
These stats are impressive and will more than likely conclude with Ohtani’s fourth MVP, but his .056 batting average in the NLDS must be mentioned. If there is anybody to turn around the postseason for his team, especially after unleashing two home runs during Game 1 of the Wild Card round, it is Ohtani.
The past two seasons of Ohtani in Los Angeles have been extraordinary, but there is still one more task to achieve at the end of October. Moreover, an opporunity to prove Friedman right that despite the regular season success, his superstar is underrated, with another gear to kick into.
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Photo Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images
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