As spring training progressed and its typical optimism prevailed, a preposterous thought began to gain traction:
What if Shohei Ohtani can actually be better?
In other words: What if arguably the most impressive season in baseball history -- one that included a .965 OPS, 46 home runs and 26 stolen bases as a hitter, and a 3.18 ERA, 156 strikeouts and 130 1/3 innings as a pitcher -- was only the beginning?
It's a consideration that might exist only amid the buoyancy that tends to permeate baseball facilities in March, when the season is new, nobody has lost and everybody reports to being in "the best shape of my life." But peel back the layers, and this wild premise might actually begin to make some sense.
Plenty of Ohtani's Los Angeles Angels teammates have thought about it.
"The ceiling is unbelievable," Angels center fielder Mike Trout said. "You never know what he's gonna do."
There have been only eight double-digit WAR seasons this century, based on FanGraphs' calculation: one each by Buster Posey and Randy Johnson, two by Trout and four by Barry Bonds, who got as high as 12.7 fWAR in 2002. Ohtani, 27, finished his unanimous 2021 MVP season with 8.1 fWAR. Many initially wondered about his ability to sustain such high levels of production, given the mental and physical demands of a two-way role in the major leagues. But what if there's actually even more upside?
It's an unfair expectation, of course, but not an unreasonable one, considering Ohtani's unprecedented ability to add significant value on the mound, in the batter's box and on the basepaths (Angels manager Joe Maddon said he has no plans to limit Ohtani's stolen base attempts this season). It's also easy to identify reasons he might be even more productive in 2022. Here are three of them:
A new rule, borrowed from last year's All-Star Game, will allow Ohtani to remain in the lineup after he finishes pitching. Last year, in the 20 starts in which he also hit, Ohtani lost a combined 22 plate appearances to the old directive that forced the Angels to replace his spot in the lineup -- and he would've lost a handful more had he not moved from the mound to the outfield on seven occasions. Another new rule has brought the designated hitter to the National League. The Angels play 10 games in NL parks this season. That's roughly 50 more plate appearances for Ohtani, if he makes each start.
The 2021 season was Ohtani's first time in six years as a full-time pitcher, and he very noticeably improved as it went along. The velocity arrived early, but the control came later. As his comfort grew, Maddon noticed significantly improved fastball command that played up his plus splitter and made his slider "devastating," a development that spilled into his 2022 debut. Ohtani went from walking 12.4% of hitters and posting a 3.49 ERA in the first half to walking 3.6% of hitters and posting a 2.84 ERA in the second half. He averaged 15 outs per start in April, May and June, and 19 in July, August and September.
The Angels played without their two other best players -- Trout and Anthony Rendon -- for the entire second half last season. And down the stretch, the effects were felt by Ohtani, who got very little to hit and saw his numbers dip congruently. Ohtani drew 48 walks after the start of August, an AL-leading 14 of which were intentional (during a three-game stretch in late September, the Houston Astros and Seattle Mariners combined to walk him 11 times in 15 plate appearances). His OPS fell by 86 points after Aug. 1. That might not have been the case if Trout and Rendon were healthy.
Here's another, less tangible thought to consider: Ohtani has now done this for a full season, and that is no small thing. He knows what it looks like and feels like to navigate a complete major league schedule as a two-way player. How to prepare more efficiently. How to structure his bullpen sessions accordingly. How to separate his two jobs in general. As the 2021 season wore on, Angels catcher Max Stassi saw Ohtani become increasingly more acclimated to the rhythms of a two-way role. He "got comfortable with how the flow of everything was going," Stassi said, "and he just started to excel."
"The thing going into this year is he has the experience of doing that," said Stassi. "You don't even want to throw any projections on him because you don't know how good this really could be."
And so the question is: At full health, in this role, can anybody truly challenge Ohtani for an MVP? Can any single hitter or pitcher prove to be more valuable than a man who, at base level, brings value in ways that have not been replicated in more than a century? Or has Ohtani -- who reported feeling "a lot stronger" at the start of spring training, then had that show up in the form of a firmer fastball on Opening Day -- already graduated into MVP inevitability?
All but one of the five main projection tools available on FanGraphs had Ohtani leading the AL in fWAR going into the season, projecting somewhere in the range of 6.1 and 7.1 fWAR. Another, The Bat, has Ohtani besting Juan Soto for the major league lead. But Ohtani is not running away from the field in any projection. And others will undoubtedly make a push in 2022. Below, we identified the five men most likely to challenge Ohtani for this year's AL MVP.
Mike Trout, Los Angeles Angels
At some point, as the sport continued to churn out young talent at breakneck speed, Mike Trout became part of the old guard. He's 30 now, and a father, and the 2022 season is his 12th in the major leagues.
But there's no firm proof that Trout isn't still the very best player in the sport.
While Ohtani cruised to the 2021 AL MVP award, Trout was sidelined by a calf injury that was more serious than expected and robbed him of the last four-plus months of the season. Before suffering that injury on May 17, Trout was batting .333/.466/.624. He feels fully healthy now and arrived in spring training focusing on his first-step reads in an effort to remain an everyday center fielder. Trout has been basically an average center fielder over the past three years, based on outs above average, but he has the athleticism to be better. If he can bolster his defense, and play in more than 140 games for the first time since 2016, he'll give Ohtani more competition than anyone.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Toronto Blue Jays
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. said it himself on March 17:
"What we did last year was a trailer," he told reporters from his team's spring training complex in Dunedin, Florida. "Now you guys are going to see the movie."
Guerrero was talking about the young, hungry Toronto Blue Jays, who surged to 91 wins in the exceedingly difficult AL East in 2021 and look even better in 2022 -- but he might as well have been talking about himself.
Last year, Guerrero led the majors in home runs (48) and paced the AL in on-base percentage (.401), slugging percentage (.601) and OPS+ (169). In any other year, Guerrero might have actually won the MVP award. But because Ohtani put together a season unlike any other, he didn't even receive a first-place vote.
If we're going to entertain the possibility of more upside with Ohtani, we need to address the likelihood of more upside with Guerrero. He's only 23. What he did last year was well within the skill set many saw in him at a young age. And now he's lighter, quicker, more athletic -- and the best, perhaps, is yet to come.
Jose Ramirez, Cleveland Guardians
The following five players exceeded 30 fWAR from 2016 to 2021: Trout, Mookie Betts, Max Scherzer, Jacob deGrom and this guy.
Yep, Jose Ramirez is in that class. He might not be able to pitch, but he brings versatility in his own way -- as an excellent defender at third base (only Nolan Arenado and Matt Chapman accumulated more outs above average in that six-year span), a gifted all-around hitter (the only men with both a higher strikeout-to-walk ratio and OPS during that stretch: Soto, Joey Votto and Trout) and a dynamic baserunner (Ramirez, Trea Turner, Betts and Trevor Story are the only players with triple-digit home runs and stolen bases from 2016 to 2021).
This is a long way of saying that Ramirez is very, very good, and he should once again challenge for the AL MVP despite residing on a bad Cleveland Guardians team.
If there's a full-time pitcher who can challenge Ohtani for the AL MVP, it's probably Gerrit Cole, who has yet to claim his first Cy Young Award but has finished within the top five in voting each of the past four years, including runner-up finishes in 2019 and 2021.
Only three starting pitchers have won an MVP award over the past 50 years: Clayton Kershaw in 2014, Justin Verlander in 2011 and Roger Clemens in 1986. Their fWAR ranged from 6.5 to 7.9 in those years. Cole, who has every bit the durability and the nastiness of those other three, got as high as 7.5 fWAR in 2019 and finished last year at 5.3, while going 16-8 with a 3.23 ERA and an AL-leading 5.93 strikeout-to-walk ratio in his second season with the Yankees.
But Cole sprinkled in some duds throughout, with five of his 30 starts finishing with a game score below 40. Eliminate those, and Cole is a legitimate MVP contender.
As soon as the MLB lockout lifted, Rays third-base coach Rodney Linares sent Wander Franco a voice memo in which he said, "We're going 30-30 this year."
Truth is, we don't know what a full major league season of Wander Franco will look like. But we can bet it will be special. In 70 regular-season games as a 20-year-old rookie last year, Franco batted .288/.347/.463 with 30 extra-base hits. He then OPS'd 1.158 against the Boston Red Sox in the division series. And that was without playing any organized baseball in 2020 due to COVID regulations.
Franco has played in just 299 professional games at any level, in any country, and he has only begun to tap into how special he can be. Soon, he'll be a perennial MVP threat. And it might be as soon as right now.