What if the unprecedented, unfathomable, unimaginable achievement of 50-50 is just the beginning? What if this colossal wonder Shohei Ohtani has put before us is only the appetizer? What if this is only the first line of Book 1 of a baseball epic?

“I’ve been on this idea since Day 1. The last six years were all about an introduction. He’s finally got this opportunity on the big stage, and he’s embraced it. He’s fought off everything that could be thrown his way.

“He’s only now on the global stage. We’re just getting started here. We’re in early chapters.”

Kuriyama challenged him to take a path where no one tread: Sign with the Fighters to pitch and hit—to be a master of nitoryu, the two-sword fighting style. Once he established himself as a two-way player, Kuriyama told Ohtani, he could jump to MLB with both disciplines as a condition of his signing.

Ohtani signed on to the dream. Kuriyama managed him for five years before Ohtani signed with the Los Angeles Angels. Kuriyama also managed him in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. Like Balelo, Kuriyama believes Ohtani is only just getting started.

“The numbers are incredible, but the ceiling I see for him is much higher,” Kuriyama told The Japan Times. “He makes a lot of mistakes at the plate. Honestly, I think he has the ability to hit around 80 home runs.”

Increased Strength

Ohtani has the long, limber levers of a Michael Phelps. Indeed, he was a competitive swimmer from kindergarten through fifth grade. He is hyper-flexible at the elbow and shoulder joints. Signed by the Angels at around 210 pounds, Ohtani has added more than 20 pounds without losing athleticism or flexibility.

“It’s the one comment I get the most,” Balelo says. “If I heard it once I heard it a thousand times: ‘He’s much bigger in person.’ He’s a beast.”

Ohtani in 2021 set a personal high in average exit velocity (93.6 mph), broke it in 2023 (94.4) and broke it again this year (95.6). There is a pattern here.

And how’s this for an outlier of Ruthian proportions? Ohtani leads the majors with nine home runs of at least 450 feet. That’s more than every team except the Colorado Rockies, who benefit from added distance from playing home games a mile high.

Dodger Resources on Offense

Ohtani enjoyed a major upgrade in player resources moving from the Angels to the Dodgers. That’s no knock on the Angels. No team has greater depth of staff, technology, analytics and systems than the Dodgers. As one veteran pitcher put it just days after joining the Dodgers: “Now I feel like I’m in the major leagues.”

Take defensive positioning, for instance. Here are the Dodgers’ MLB ranks since 2019 in defensive efficiency, a measurement of turning batted ball into outs: 2, 2, 1, 1, 2, 2. No team comes close to matching that wizardry.

Yes, rule changes have helped increase the stolen base success rate, but nobody else is stealing bases with the same efficiency as Ohtani. Being limited to DH also allows Ohtani to focus more on finding opportunities to run, such as uncovering tells from pitchers.

“He’s clearly done a lot of research,” Kuriyama told The Japan Times. “I think he watches the pitchers closely, noticing even the slightest shift in weight that indicates a throw to home. This year, even though he hasn’t been able to pitch, it seems like he’s enjoying that aspect of the game.”

Dodger Resources on the Mound

Maybe you forgot: Ohtani is also one of the best starting pitchers in the game. Among pitchers who have started 86 games, Ohtani ranks second in strikeout rate (11.4, just behind teammate Tyler Glasnow), fifth in winning percentage (.667, even more remarkable because he has never pitched for a winning team) and sixth in ERA (3.01). That’s all time.

Over the course of his career, Ohtani (3.01 ERA, 11.4 K/9) is a combination of Chris Sale (3.04, 11.1) and Juan Soto (160 OPS+ vs. Ohtani’s 155) in the same player.

His pure stuff is filthy. From 2022–23, his sweeper was the single toughest pitch to hit in MLB (.157; minimum 1,700 pitches). He also averaged 97.0 mph with his four-seamer. Only six starters threw harder.

With that foundation of pitches, Dodger know-how, Dodger defensive efficiency (from 2018–23 the Angels ranked 13, 9, 14, 29, 6 and 24) and the way the Dodgers emphasize recovery, Ohtani may be even more dominant on the mound next year.

Closing Holes

Ohtani had so much raw power on elevated pitches and so much less on pitches low in the zone that for the first half of the season Dodgers manager Dave Roberts encouraged him not to swing at low strikes. Through his first 73 games, Ohtani hit only one home run on any pitch in the bottom rail of the strike zone.

But then Ohtani, who hits from an upright posture with his hands high, which can make covering low pitches difficult, simply closed that hole in his game. In 83 games since then, Ohtani has hit nine homers in the bottom rail, including a splitter Sunday for a game-tying, ninth-inning blast.

Wait. That’s not all in terms of his huge improvement this year:

Ohtani vs. Secondary Pitches

*95 points better than anybody in baseball.

Ohtani HRs on Sliders

*Six more than anybody in baseball.

Leading Off

Ohtani began the season hitting second but in mid-June, the injury to Mookie Betts moved Ohtani into the leadoff spot. There he should stay.

Ohtani is the greatest slugger ever in the leadoff spot. Among players who hit most of a season there, his .671 slugging percentage batting first blows away the previous mark of .644 by Betts in 2018. His leadoff OPS of 1.050 is the greatest ever, topping the previous mark of 1.037 by Paul Molitor in 1987.

In 84 games leading off, Ohtani has hit 34 homers and stolen 40 bases—a 30-30 year inside virtually half a season.

Biggest Room for Improvement

Ohtani chases too much for a great hitter, which is probably what Kuriyama was referring to when he mentioned his “mistakes at the plate.” Ohtani has been right around the major league average in chase rate (28%). With Betts behind him, Ohtani this year has seen a 2.5% increase on pitches in the zone. That helps. But if Ohtani can cut his chase rate even by 3%, his OPS will go up further.

The Postseason

Do you have doubts? Did you watch the WBC? Did you hear about how Ohtani gave a stirring locker room speech before the final about not being intimidated by the stars on Team USA? Did you watch him strike out Mike Trout for the final out with the nastiest sweeper of his life after running down to the bullpen in between at-bats to prepare to close the game?

“The thing that has touched me the most is the appreciation he is getting from star athletes.”

Balelo mentioned LeBron James and Patrick Mahomes.

“These are the people who truly understand how difficult it is to enter a club that’s never been done,” Balelo says. “That’s the most impressive part: people that have reached the pinnacle in their sport reaching out. For them to say, Wow, they see it and live it every day, the difficulty of achieving those goals.”

Ohtani received a curtain call in Miami after recording the first-ever 50-50 season. / Sam Navarro-Imagn Images

“I’m just so proud of how he has handled this year and how he has stayed focused and just prepared and just gone out there every day,” Balelo says. “I can’t be prouder. Nobody really knows what we’ve been through. It’s really amazing to see this athlete and more so this person handle this whole situation the way he has.

“Where,” he asked Ohtani, “did that come from?”

“I have no idea,” Ohtani replied.

Homer wrote in The Odyssey: “There is no greater fame for a man than that which he wins with his footwork or the skill of his hands.” Ohtani is the rarity who has achieved his fame by way of both means. The epic has begun. Tell us more, O Muse, about this man of many ways.