how baseball player Shohei Ohtani, hero of the “greatest game in history”, defies statistics? – Liberation

He is the highest paid American athlete ($700 million over ten years). For a week, he has been in the media headlines in the United States after his match against Miami, Thursday September 19, was described as a “greatest match in history”. On social networks, where videos of his recent exploits are playing in a loop, there are countless Internet users calling him, quite simply, a god. In France, however, it is a safe bet that his name is largely unknown. Because <a href="https://www.archysport.com/2022/01/shohei-ohtani-is-ready-to-be-the-face-of-major-league-baseball/” title=”Shohei Ohtani is ready to be the face of major league baseball”>Shohei Ohtani plays baseball, a little-known sport in France, and incomprehensible to ordinary French people. So, if we tell you that Ohtani, who wears the colors of the Los Angeles Dodgers team, combined three home runs and two stolen bases in a single game against Miami, you will not be further ahead or necessarily transported of emotion. CheckNews so asked gaming experts to “translate” Shohei Ohtani’s performance. And to explain why, we are dealing with possibly the best player in the history of baseball, but also simply a sporting prodigy.

“It’s just exceptional. Even superlatives are not enough to describe what he does. It almost seems unreal”estimates Benjamin Bernard, journalist responsible for following American sports for beIN Sports. In this discipline where (let’s keep it simple) players must hit the ball with a bat, then go through all the bases scattered on the field to score points, Shohei Ohtani has also become, on occasion of “greatest match in history”, the first in history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in the same season. In MLB, the North American baseball league where Nippon plays, only two players have previously combined these two statistics, but never in a single season.

Behind these technical terms lie two gestures that only the best master and which require specific qualities. As for the home run, “this is when a player hits the ball and it goes straight to the back of the court, explains Benjamin Bernard. It is the most offensively decisive move in baseball, since it guarantees scoring. It scores at least one point, and up to four if teammates were on the bases.” Hitting a home run requires “a certain power, given that the bullet must travel more than a hundred meters”.

As for stolen bases, the term is used in cases where “the player decides to leave his base the moment the ball returns to the opposing pitcher’s hand, without waiting for his teammate to have hit it, and manages to run to the next one”, summarizes Elliot Fleys, general director of the French Baseball and Softball Federation. The player takes a risk in that he exposes himself to elimination, but gets closer to the final objective if he succeeds. “Stealing bases requires explosiveness and speed,” given that the distance between two bases is close to 27 meters, which must be covered in a few seconds. As a result, continues Benjamin Bernard, “the two are not supposed to go together. The best home run hitters are strong, while to steal bases, you have to be thin, slender, very dynamic. Ohtani is not the best in history in home runs alone or in stolen bases, but his level of versatility is, statistically, unheard of.

Not seen since Babe Ruth

Despite his imposing size, 1.93 m and 95 kilos, Shohei Ohtani has maintained a speed that allows him to sprint. THE New Yorker erected it into “Vitruvian Man of Baseball” a year ago. Elliot Fleys agrees: “If we had to define a baseball player’s physique that allows you to take on everything, it would be pretty much this one.” To draw a more meaningful parallel for the French public, he sketches, the equivalent to rugby would be “the physique of a third line but with the legs of a winger”, a colossus capable of crossing the terrain at full speed.

What makes Shohei Ohtani even more unusual is that he originally falls into the category of “two-way player”, a player who is both one of the best hitters and the best pitchers, which is not t was not seen since the American legend Babe Ruth. For good reason, the rules of baseball leagues normally allow the pitcher to be replaced by a batter, to be the only player in the defense not to go on offense. Shohei Ohtani’s strength is to be (in addition to his running skills) a “two in one” player, capable of ensuring whatever his position: hitting the ball hard when his team attacks, then throwing the ball to deceive the opposing batter when his team goes on defense. An elbow injury prevents him from pitching this year and his club, the Los Angeles Dodgers, prefers to preserve him. But the statistics recorded in previous years testify to his exceptional qualities as a pitcher. In 2022, Shohei Ohtani established himself as “the fourth best pitcher in MLB”, recalls Bastien Leclair, one of the founders of The Strike Out, a media dedicated to baseball.

“A match where he would score two goals and then save a penalty”

Difficult to cite an equivalent profile, since “in other team sports, we do not observe such a duality, a difference as marked as that which exists between pitcher and hitter”, points out Benjamin Bernard. But both the beIN Sports journalist, Elliot Fleys and Bastien Leclair agree that in order to get as close as possible, we must look at the football side. For the founder of The Strike Out, “It’s like he’s playing the first half of a World Cup final as a center forward [la pointe de l’attaque, ndlr], with the level of a Cristiano Ronaldo or Erling Haaland, and that he played the second half as goalkeeper, with the qualities of a Manuel Neuer. “It would be a game where he scored two goals and then saved a penalty.”

From August 31when he reached 43 home runs and 43 stolen bases, #17 of the Los Angeles Dodgers had achieved an unprecedented performance. To date, Ohtani now has 53 home runs and 55 stolen bases. And the season isn’t over yet. By September 29, “he will probably reach 60-60, with him, you never know”, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told the media. After his individual exploits, his coronation as world champion with his country, all he needs is a collective title in MLB to establish his legend. Benjamin Bernard assures us, “if he continues like this, it will become difficult not to put him in the GOAT box”, THE greatest of all time or best of all time in their sport.