Friday Rewind: Ohtani Keeps Rewriting History

About a year or so ago, I wrote my Shohei Ohtani chapter for WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL. The book is, loosely speaking, a countdown of the most magical moments in baseball history. There were so many magical Shohei moments to choose from, it was already pretty close to impossible to pick.

In many ways, we still don’t appreciate just how crazy Ohtani’s 2021 season really was. For example, look at this:

Players who have hit 37-plus home runs in their team’s first 102 games:

1. Mark McGwire, 43, 1998

2. Barry Bonds, 42, 2001

3. Aaron Judge, 42, 2022

4. Babe Ruth, 42, 1928

5. Baby Ruth, 42, 1921

6. Jimmie Foxx, 41, 1932

7. Luis Gonzalez, 41, 2001

8. Reggie Jackson, 41, 1969

9. Ken Griffey Jr., 40, 1998

10. Roger Maris, 40, 1961

11. Sammy Sosa, 40, 1999

12. Mickey Mantle, 39, 1961

13. Hank Greenberg, 38, 1938

14. Matt Williams, 38, 1994

15. Chris Davis, 37, 2013

16. Mark McGwire, 37, 1999

17. Mark McGwire, 37, 1987

18. Shohei Ohtani, 37, 2021

19. Babe Ruth, 37, 1920

20. Sammy Sosa, 37, 1998

You will see in there pretty much all of the most famous home run seasons in baseball history. One that is missing is Babe Ruth’s 1927 season, which really was remarkable. At this point in the season, not only was Ruth not on a 60-homer pace, he wasn’t even leading the league in home runs — Lou Gehrig was. You can read all about that, too, in WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL.

But the point is — did you remember Ohtani being on THAT kind of crazy home run pace in ’21? I didn’t. I remembered how remarkable the pitching/hitting thing was. I remembered that he was leading the league in home runs for a long time (and did lead the league in triples). But I didn’t remember him being a threat to hit 60. He struggled a bit in the final two months of the season and ended up hitting a mere 46 homers, maybe that’s why I don’t have as clear a memory of the early home run surge. Also that was right after COVID, and people were only slowly being allowed back to the ballpark. But … wow.

Anyway, I chose my Shohei moment and felt good about it — and I didn’t even choose something from 2021. I chose something fresh in my memory then, back-to-back days in June 2022 against the Royals, on the first day he hit two home runs and drove in eight, the next day he pitched eight shutout innings and struck out 13. The absurdity of that is so obvious, I don’t even need to attach words. I called up Dave Winfield to gain some perspective; Winfield was a fantastic college baseball pitcher as well as a future Hall of Fame outfielder (you no doubt know he was also drafted by NBA and NFL teams), and I talked with him about what makes Ohtani so great and if he wishes that he’d tried to do the Shohei thing himself.

I loved that chapter — still do — and that was that.

In March, I was given the chance to do a final edit on the book. This is normally a pretty straightforward thing; you fix some mistakes, tidy up a few awkward sentences, maybe, sometimes you even add in a little late-arriving information. Right at the deadline, thanks to a Brilliant Reader, I got a very cool detail for Babe Ruth’s called shot, so I was able to add that in.

But when I got to the Shohei chapter, I realized: I had to completely rewrite it. Why? Well, you know why, this was just days after the incredible, impossibly wonderful Shohei v. Mike Trout matchup in the World Baseball Classic. And as much as I loved those Royals games, that matchup was more magical. So I quickly rewrote my Shohei chapter and got it into the book JUST under the gun. Awesome!

On Thursday, the Angels played a doubleheader against the Tigers.

In Game 1, Shohei threw the first shutout of his career — allowing just one hit in the process, a line drive single to someone named Kerry Carpenter on an 0-2 fastball that he left just a little bit up.

Here are ALL the complete games pitched this year in which the pitcher allowed one hit or less.

• Marcus Stroman’s one-hit shutout against Tampa Bay, May 29

• Domingo Germán’s perfect game at Oakland, June 28.

• Shohei Ohtani, Thursday in Detroit

That’s it. That’s all of them.

In the second game, Shohei Ohtani came up in the first inning and struck out looking. Aww. His next time up, he launched a 108-mph opposite-field dart into the leftfield seats. I mean, who does that? The next time up, he hit one of the hardest-hit balls I’ve ever seen, a 117-mph, 435-foot blast into centerfield that was basically over the fence before the outfielders even had a chance to start running after it.

Who is this Martian? Seriously.

Of course, it set off a whole bunch of firsts — the most obvious being it was the first time an MLB player* has thrown a shutout in the first game of a doubleheader and hit even one home run in the second game, much less two.

*I do imagine that it has happened in the Negro Leagues on more than one occasion, with guys like Bullet Rogan, Martin Dihigo, Leon Day or Double Duty Radcliffe being the most likely to have done it.

In fact, the incomparable Sarah Langs tells us that nobody in MLB has thrown a shutout in one game of a doubleheader and even STARTED the other game as a non-pitcher since Babe Ruth against the St. Louis Browns on July 17, 1918 — and Ruth’s shutout that day was only five innings. So even that isn’t the same thing.

And of course, all of this glorious wonder doesn’t even put Shohei’s achievement in context. He didn’t just hit two ridiculous home runs in a game. He leads all of baseball with 38 home runs. He has a real chance — it’s a longshot, but it’s a real chance — to break Aaron Judge’s American League homer record of 62.

And Ohtani didn’t just throw a one-hit shutout. He improved as a pitcher to 9-5 with a 3.43 ERA, and batters are now hitting .185 against him, by far the lowest mark in baseball.

Lowest batting average against:

1. Shohei Ohtani, .185

2. Corbin Burnes, .194

3. Tyler Wells, .197

4. Blake Snell, .197

5. Kodai Senga, .198

So, yeah, you bet, I’d like to rewrite my Shohei chapter again right now. I undoubtedly will for the paperback. I feel like I’ll be rewriting that Shohei chapter again and again for the next 10 years. It’s too obvious to say we’ve never seen anything like him in baseball. I don’t think we have ever seen anything quite like him in sports.

Hey, if you feel like it, I’d love if you’d share this post with your friends!

WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL Update

The big book news of the week is that I’ve added two West Coast dates to the first two weeks of my book tour! On Sept. 12, I’ll be at Chevalier’s in Los Angeles, having a super-fun conversation with the incredible Molly Knight and, perhaps, a couple of special guest stars. And the next day, I’ll be in Santa Rosa at Copperfield’s Books. So exciting! Those will not be ticketed events.

You can buy tickets for:

• Sept. 5 conversation with Bob Costas in Spring Lake, N.J.

• Sept. 6 conversation with Alex Edelman in Newport, R.I.

• Sept. 7 conversation with Gerald Early in St. Louis

• Sept. 8 conversation with Mike Schur in Kansas City

• Sept. 9 conversation with Jeff Garlin in Cincinnati

As always, our awesome publicist Jamie and I are so grateful for everyone who is sending in tour requests. We hear you Chicago, Boston, Portland, Minneapolis, etc. We’re working on it.

A whole lot of other fun things are coming together — I can’t even keep up at this point, if I’m being honest. We’re going to have a partnership with Strat-O-Matic (does it get better than free Strat-O?). We’ve got some really cool things happening at these events (like, I was just told Fredbird is going to be giving out Cardinals stuff in St. Louis. Fredbird!). We’re planning incredibly cool things with MLB.com and Esquire. There’s lots more; we’re still more than five weeks out from publication day. It’s mind-blowing to me.

And it’s humbling, it really is. A few weeks ago, I went to our local Barnes & Noble, as I often do, and I started just looking around the front of the store … and I had this strange pang of panic. I had just wrapped up WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL — you know, settled on my final Shohei chapter and everything — and I had this author feeling of “I cannot wait until people read this book. I really think people are going to love it.”

But as I looked around the store, all I saw were celebrity books and political rage books and superstar-author books and book club romances … and I thought, “What chance does a little book about baseball have in this forest? How will anyone ever see it?” One of my favorite singer-songwriters, David Wilcox, called his first big album “How Did You Find Me Here?” That’s what I kept thinking.

But the buzz around WHY WE LOVE BASEBALL is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced as an author — and that includes the madness that surrounded Paterno. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it now, I’m sure I’ll say it again: I cannot wait for you to read this book. I love it so much. I think there’s joy on every page.

And here’s where I tell you that it’s available for preorder at:

Amazon

Barnes & Noble

Books-A-Million

Bookshop.org

Hudson Booksellers

Target

And, of course, I’d love for you to buy it at your favorite local bookstore — mine being Rainy Day Books, where you can get a signed copy and be eligible for all sorts of really cool prizes that Geoffrey and the gang are putting together.

And remember: If you preorder the book, you’re eligible for some super-fun bonus content that was cut from the book. You just have to sign up here.

Happy Friday! The Rewind is free so everyone can enjoy it. Just a reminder that Joe Blogs is a reader-supported newsletter, and I’d love and appreciate your support.

JoeBlogs Weekly Awards

Player of the week: I asked Mike Schur to write about the Red Sox’ new sensation, Triston Casas, who on the morning of June 7 was hitting .194 and looking entirely overmatched. In 35 starts since then, he’s hitting .336/.421/638 with nine home runs, 21 runs and 21 RBIs. He had a banger of a week, going 9 for 16 with a triple and three homers. Anyway, as I suspected, Mike said he had a LOT to say about Casas, and it would take him a long time to say it all, and I can imagine him typing a 75,000-word essay into his phone right now. When he gets it done, I’ll pass it along. It might be a few weeks.

Pitcher of the week: I think the answer here is Shohei Ohtani, even though he had perhaps his worst outing of the season last Friday against Pittsburgh (6⅓ innings, six hits, five runs). But a one-hit shutout will make a week pretty good. Big thumbs up also to Cleveland’s young Tanner Bibee, who continues to impress, and Washington’s Josiah Gray, who first dealt with the Assyrians and then pitched two superb games, allowing only one run in total.

Team of the week: How about them Cubbies? They went 6-0 this week, taking four from the Cardinals, so I imagine the North Side is buzzing. The Cubs have been underperforming their Pythagorean win expectation all year — they have outscored opponents by 55 runs, the third-best run differential in the league behind only the Braves and Dodgers, and yet they’re a .500 ballclub.

That said, they’re not the biggest Pythagorean underachievers in the league. That would be your San Diego Padres, who have outscored opponents by 51 runs and are five games under .500. This team is utterly inexplicable to me. They have four of the best hitters in all of baseball — Soto, Machado, Tatis and Bogaerts — and that doesn’t even include Ha-Seong Kim, who is having a sensational year. And yet they’re eighth in the National League in runs scored. How? And they also have the lowest ERA in the league. And they are also rated as one of the better defensive teams in baseball. But they have a losing record. How? And what do you even do about it?

One legit question here is: How, at this moment, do you judge the performance of general manager A.J. Preller? I respect and like A.J., but let’s look at this clinically. He has been GM of the Padres since 2014. The team has never won the division, which isn’t entirely a fair knock, since they’re in the same division as the Dodgers. They have never won 90 games in those 10 seasons. They did make the playoffs twice, but one of those was the COVID year, when everybody made the playoffs, and anyway, they’re 8-10 in those playoff games.

But the big thing is that the Padres have a top-three payroll — Preller has been given an astonishing amount of money and freedom to make several of the game’s splashiest signings, while also hiring ultra-respected manager Bob Melvin — and this team can’t get out of its own way. I can’t exactly tell you what Preller has done wrong. Everything I know about baseball says it should be working. But it ain’t. And who else are you going to blame?

After a slow start, Casas is doing some heavy lifting in Boston. (Winslow Townson/Getty Images)

Mike Schur on Triston Casas!

OK, well, the texts are in. Here’s my pal and hero Mike Schur on a fascinating Red Sox player, Triston Casas:

OK here’s what I’ll say: He’s quite a large man, and in his first 50-75 games it looked like he was too large and stiff to hit effectively. He was like .190/.300/.350 or something for a while. He seemed like a left-handed Bobby Dalbec — a AAAA player who was never going to click.

He also had typically weird baseball player habits, like sunbathing before games and taking naps on the field that in typical baseball nonsense ways led to vets yelling at him about “doing things the right way” or whatever, which is stupid, but coupled with his struggles at the plate made it feel like maybe this wasn’t going to work.

Except for one thing: He had an incredible eye. He would take change-ups on 0-2 counts that were like 4 inches off the plate. It was wild to see a rookie watch those pitches go by. It felt like if he could ever just get his swing timed to Major League pitching, there was a chance.

And then one day, about a month ago, he just started hitting everything. He hit towering homers to left and was drilling balls off the wall in dead center and pulling inside pitches into the rightfield corner, And he kept walking.

Great stuff, Mike. And … oh wait, there’s more.

He hit a homer off Scherzer. He just hit a homer off Strider! The guy can hit anyone right now, and he’s on pace to walk 76 times in 145 games as a 23-year-old rookie, and it’s awesome.

Cool. It is awesome and … oh, I’m sorry, more coming in.

He’s top 30 in OPS in all of baseball. He has a higher OPS than Tatis and Riley and Alonso and Arozarena.

His OPS by month:

April: .585
May: .766
June: .851
July: 1.284

I think that improvement says it all. Nope, wait, not all.

It’s fun to watch in real-time as a good hitter figures out how to be good at the Major League level.

There you go and … oh, sorry. More.

Also, the Sox vets were dumb to yell at him about sunbathing and napping before games. Get over yourselves, vets.

Our guy Mike Schur never disappoints. And it’s all true, Triston Casas is another super-exciting young baseball player in a time when baseball is just bursting with super-exciting young baseball players.

He’s 15 for his last 32 with 6 HR and 8 walks.

Yeah, one last text.

This Week in JoeBlogs

Monday: Brian Harman Made Things Uninteresting. Always fun to write a little golf; even when the tournament is not all that much fun.

Wednesday: A thought experiment: What if the A’s and Royals were not in the league?

Thursday: Some trade deadline talk, as well as some Immaculate Grid talk!