What can we say about Shohei Ohtani that hasn't already been said? After all, we even now know the name of his dog.
With the Hall of Fame announcement for the Class of 2024 set for Tuesday, how about this for a discussion topic: Has Ohtani already accomplished enough to merit eventual election to Cooperstown?
Sure, it's easy to point to the fact that Ohtani has played just six major league seasons, but let's not forget just how unique his Hall of Fame case is and how high his career peaks have been.
In his past three transcendent seasons while simultaneously performing as one of the best hitters and best pitchers in the majors, he won two MVP Awards -- becoming the first player to unanimously win the award twice. You can attempt to compare Babe Ruth or Bullet Joe Rogan of the Negro Leagues to Ohtani, but given the specific circumstances and caliber of competition, Ohtani stands out as a one-of-a-kind baseball sensation.
This brings us to the essential argument of many Hall of Fame debates: How to consider peak value versus career value. That's the case for several candidates on this year's ballot, including Todd Helton and Chase Utley, two players who had very high levels of peak performance but not the career numbers usually associated with Hall of Famers. Andruw Jones is similar as a player who starred in his 20s then declined rapidly after turning 30.
So let's take that to the extreme in Ohtani's case: In a scenario -- hopefully an unlikely one -- where the rest of his career doesn't match what he accomplished over the previous three seasons, would his unrivaled short peak as a dominant two-way player be enough?
(At this point, Ohtani hasn't even qualified to reach the Hall of Fame ballot, as rules require a candidate to play in at least 10 seasons. Given that he signed a 10-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, we can safely assume he'll reach eligibility with his first game in 2027.)
To find our answer, let's create a hypothetical Ohtani for the rest of his career who is not an obvious Hall of Famer. Let's say Ohtani, who tore the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow in August and will not pitch until 2025, never makes it back as an effective pitcher and settles in at an offensive level similar to 2022, when he was excellent but not quite one of the best hitters in the majors like in 2023. He hit .273/.356/.519 with 34 home runs in 2022, worth 3.4 WAR as a hitter. Indeed, it's entirely possible that 2023 ends up as his career-best season as a hitter -- although we've also learned not to bet against Ohtani. But using 2022 as a baseline, here's a possible 10-year WAR timeline going forward for Ohtani as a hitter only: 3.4, 3.4, 3.0, 3.0, 3.0, 2.5, 2.0, 1.5, 1.2, 0.5 -- adding up to a total of 23.5.
With 34.7 career WAR already in the bank, that takes Ohtani to 58.2 career WAR -- right around that 60 career WAR total that marks a borderline Hall of Fame candidate. Perhaps 23.5 WAR as a designated hitter over the next 10 years feels like an absurdly low total; it certainly would be a massive disappointment given Ohtani's contract, but it would still rank as the eighth-highest total from ages 29 to 38 for a player who was primarily a DH -- and four of the top seven are Hall of Famers (Edgar Martinez, Paul Molitor, David Ortiz and Frank Thomas). Essentially, we have Ohtani producing as much value as Hal McRae at those ages and McRae was a really good DH in those years, hitting .299/.360/.464 with a 128 OPS+ and 24.1 WAR. (Yes, a non-pitcher Ohtani could play the outfield, but we're envisioning him here only as a DH.)
If we add that 23.5 remaining WAR as a hitter to his current career total of 19.6 as a hitter, that's 43.1. If he averages 30 home runs per season over those 10 years, that boosts his career total to 471.
Who does that look like? It looks like Nelson Cruz: 449 home runs, 42.2 WAR.
Or a lot like Carlos Delgado: 473 home runs, 44.4 WAR.
Now, those two had tremendous careers, but both are long shot Hall of Fame candidates. Delgado has already been on the ballot and lasted just one year -- admittedly, that came during peak ballot overcrowding, so maybe he deserved a longer look. Cruz will appear on the ballot in five years, but his career value isn't anywhere near those Hall of Fame DHs we listed above.
Of course, Cruz and Delgado didn't also spend three seasons (and two months in 2018) as a dominant pitcher.
Would Ohtani's iconic 2021-23 run put him over the top? One way to examine this is to look at the Hall of Famers with the highest percentage of their career value in their three best seasons. The highest belongs to relief pitcher Bruce Sutter, who has 24.5 career WAR, with 15.9 coming in his three best seasons (64.9%). That's not a very relevant comparison and most of the players with the highest percentages are the weakest Hall of Famers with a low career WAR total (which makes sense). Using a cutoff of 45 career WAR, here's that list:
1. Sandy Koufax: 54.8%
2. Ed Walsh: 51.4%
3. Ralph Kiner: 50.4%
4. Joe McGinnity: 49.9%
5. Rube Waddell: 48.9%
6. Hal Newhouser: 47.8%
7. Chuck Klein: 46.9%
8. George Sisler: 46.1%
9. Mordecai Brown: 45.5%
10. Addie Joss: 45.3%
It's no surprise that Koufax tops the list, right? He finished with 53.1 pitching WAR in his shortened career, with 29.1 of that in his three Cy Young seasons of 1963 (10.7), 1965 (8.1) and 1966 (10.3). After him, the list skews toward early 20th century pitchers who had a few dominant seasons in relatively short careers (Walsh, McGinnity, Waddell, Brown and Joss). Koufax is the most modern entry here and he sailed into the Hall of Fame on the first ballot, so impressed were voters by his short-but-legendary run.
Ohtani accumulated 28.6 WAR in his 2021-23 seasons -- which would be 49.1% of our hypothetical career total of 58.2. It would certainly be an outlier type of career for a Hall of Famer, but certainly Koufax-esque in how he transcended the sport in his own time. Koufax also dominated in the 1963 and 1965 World Series, leading the Dodgers to two titles. The abrupt ending at the height of his power is also part of the reason the Koufax legend lives on
Are there any other similar players to our hypothetical Ohtani who are not Hall of Famers? Not really. Don Mattingly was arguably the biggest name in the sport in the mid-'80s, hitting .337 while averaging 30 home runs, 210 hits and 121 RBIs over a four-year span from 1984 to 1987, but his Hall of Fame support peaked at 28% his first year on the ballot. Dale Murphy won back-to-back MVP Awards with the Atlanta Braves in 1982 and '83 -- when the Braves were televised nationally on TBS and Murphy was arguably the biggest star in the game. Like Mattingly, however, his career lacked longevity and neither player matched Ohtani's peak value via modern analytics.
To put Ohtani's 2021-23 seasons in another historical perspective, he's one of just 28 players since 1900 with three 9-WAR seasons -- and seven of those were deadball-era pitchers, including the aforementioned Walsh, McGinnity and Waddell. Of the other 27, all are either in the Hall Fame, would be in (Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, Roger Clemens) or will someday get in (Mike Trout).
There is one player who exceeded Ohtani's three-year WAR total (though with just two seasons above 9 WAR) and didn't make the Hall of Fame: Wilbur Wood, a left-handed knuckleball pitcher for the Chicago White Sox in the 1970s, who from 1971 to 1973 carried a workload straight out of the deadball era to rack up enormous value. He went 70-50 with a 2.64 ERA while averaging 357 innings per season, posting WAR totals of 11.7, 10.7 and 7.6, a three-year pitching total of 30.0.
Still, Wood never quite made enough of an impression on the general public ("He resembles a left-handed accountant or pastry chef on a Sunday outing," the great Roger Angell once wrote) and he was never the same after a line drive shattered his kneecap in 1975.
The next-highest three-season WAR total for a non-Hall of Famer belongs to Wes Ferrell, a top American League pitcher in the 1930s who won 20 games six times with Cleveland and Boston and is arguably the best hitting pitcher of all time -- at least among those not named Ruth or Ohtani. In those pre-DH days, he was limited to pinch hitting on his off days, but in adding his pitching and hitting WAR together, Ferrell's top three seasons come in at 10.6 WAR in 1935, 9.4 in 1930 and 8.0 in 1931, for a total of 28.0. He finished with 193 wins and 60.1 WAR, a borderline candidate via current analysis, but he never received much Hall of Fame consideration. (After Ferrell, the next three on the list among eligible candidates are Curt Schilling at 25.2 WAR and Utley and Helton at 25.0.)
In the end, I'm left comparing our hypothetical Ohtani only to Koufax. It's been nearly 60 years since Koufax last pitched, but those three seasons -- 25-5, 1.88 ERA in 1963; 26-8, 2.04 in 1965; 27-9, 1.73 in 1966 -- built a brilliant mythology that lives on, all these decades later. I believe that would be the case with Ohtani; even if he were limited to being just a very nice DH the rest of his career, he's a Hall of Famer.