Los Angeles Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani is of course best known for his historically unexampled combination of power at the plate and ace-grade skills as a starting pitcher. He’s not pitching this season as he recovers from Tommy John surgery, but the $700 million man remains one of the most deadly hitters in baseball as the Dodgers’ every-day designated hitter. His skills don’t end there, though. Ohtani has long been a hasty presence on the bases, and this season he’s taken his base-stealing to new heights. Indeed, Ohtani may have yet another appointment with history thanks in part to his knack for pilfering bases in 2024.
Going into the Dodgers’ weekend series against the St. Louis Cardinals, Ohtani has a National League-leading 37 home runs and 35 stolen bases (against just four times caught). With 40 games remaining on the Dodgers’ schedule. Barring the wholly unexpected, those tallies mean that Ohtani will almost certainly join the exclusive 40-40 club, or those players to amass at least 40 home runs and 40 stolen bases in the same season. It’s happened just five times across all of Major League Baseball history:
|
Player, team |
Year |
Home runs |
Stolen bases |
|
Ronald Acuña Jr., Atlanta Braves |
2023 |
41 |
73 |
|
Alfonso Soriano, Washington Nationals |
2006 |
46 |
41 |
|
Alex Rodriguez, Seattle Mariners |
1998 |
42 |
46 |
|
Barry Bonds, San Francisco Giants |
1996 |
42 |
40 |
|
Jose Canseco, Oakland A’s |
1988 |
42 |
40 |
Ohtani’s current pace will put him at 49 home runs and 46 stolen bases for the regular season. That, obviously, would make him the sixth member of the 40-40 club, and it would also make Ohtani the first ever to compile at least 45 homers and 45 steals in a season. It’s no stretch to imagine a slight uptick on both fronts that puts 50-50 in play.
He also may be the quickest ever to 40-40, as Eric Stephen recently noted:
Ohtani’s 35 steals is both a career-high and the record for stolen bases by a primary DH. Normally, you might worry about stretch-drive fatigue eating into his pace, but there’s no sign of that yet. He’s also swiped seven bags in August, and 19 of his stolen bases have come since the fourth of July. He’s succeeded in 90% of his attempts, and Ohtani has stolen 12 in a row since last being thrown out on July 22. Ohtani, of course, isn’t dealing with the fatigue of pitching this season, and that no doubt has helped him stay fresh and at peak.
On another level, the Dodgers’ lead in the NL West is a skimpy one at the moment, and even if they prevail over the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks in the division race, they still may need to claw until the end to secure a top-two seed in the NL and a first-round bye. In other words, manager Dave Roberts may not have the luxury of resting Ohtani and other regulars in the final days of the regular season. That, in turn, should mean more opportunities for Ohtani to reach 45-45 and maybe even 50-50. Speaking of those paces, he could get a jump on them this weekend, as the Cardinals have been MLB‘s worst at preventing steals this season. This all adds up to one of MLB’s leading subplots down the stretch, at least at the individual level.
Ohtani’s history-making exploits are so frequent as to become commonplace, but that doesn’t mean we should ignore his unprecedented nature and the greatness that flows from it. Consider this just one more piece of evidence that Ohtani is like no one else baseball has ever seen.
