With 51-51 season, Shohei Ohtani shows us yet again that he's capable of the impossible

This season wasn’t supposed to be about Shohei Ohtani’s stats.

After three years of increasingly mind-blowing on-field achievements from the two-way player, Ohtani’s offseason jump from the Angels to the Dodgers introduced a wealth of intriguing new storylines involving the once-in-a-lifetime talent. But with elbow surgery at the end of last season restricting Ohtani to DH duties in 2024, our collective instinct was to put our hopes for more never-before-seen feats on hold for a year while he rehabbed his way back to two-way status.

In the meantime, there was no shortage of captivating subplots to monitor: A $700 million free-agent contract with unprecedented deferrals. Ohtani’s fit atop a lineup with two other MVPs in Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman. How he would handle his DH responsibilities while simultaneously rehabbing the second elbow surgery of his career. A gambling scandal involving his former interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, that rocked the baseball world just before Opening Day. The chance to play in October after six consecutive losing seasons in Anaheim. Teaming up with another Japanese superstar in Yoshinobu Yamamoto. His wife! His dog! And on and on.

With so much else surrounding Ohtani’s debut season in Dodger blue, his raw statistical output — temporarily limited to that of just a hitter (and one who doesn’t play defense) — seemed likely to be secondary.

Or so we thought.

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Instead, once again, Ohtani has found a way to make history. On Thursday against the Marlins at loanDepot Park, he became the first player ever to collect 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in an MLB season. And then he became the first player to collect 51 of each.

"I'm happy, relieved, and very respectfully to the peers and everybody who came before who played this sport of baseball," Ohtani said through an interpreter after the Dodgers' 20-4 romp over the Marlins.

A playful Mookie Betts told reporters that he sensed something else from his teammate on his historic day.

"I don't even know if it was like a relief thing," Betts said. "I think it was like he was just feeling good and feeling sexy, and just knew, like, 'I'm about to do this today.' He could've had four homers today."

Ohtani’s gradual march toward an unfathomable milestone concluded with one of the best offensive performances of his already-legendary big-league tenure: a career-high six hits, with three home runs, two stolen bases and 10 runs batted in (a Dodgers record). Never before had a player accomplished all of those things in a single major-league game, and Ohtani did so while simultaneously founding a club that didn’t previously exist. Barely mentioned was the fact that it was also the first three-homer game of his MLB career.

“To be honest, I’m the one probably most surprised,” Ohtani said, according to the Associated Press. “I have no idea where this came from, but I’m glad that it was going well today.”

It was a most memorable day in the same ballpark where Ohtani gave us the singular highlight of the 2023 World Baseball Classic, when he struck out Mike Trout to clinch victory for Team Japan. He clearly likes playing in South Florida.

"I’ve had perhaps the most memorable moments here in my career, and this stadium has become one of my favorite stadiums,” he said.

Never before has there been a player like Shohei Ohtani.

So yes, the inaugural member of the 50-50 club is the same player who struck out 167 batters in 132 innings last year and is working his way back for a possible return to the mound this postseason. Ohtani’s 50th home run marked a new Dodgers single-season franchise record, surpassing Shawn Green’s 49 long balls in 2001 — and that’s practically just a footnote.

Ohtani’s latest and greatest achievement was months in the making but hardly a certainty until recently. With 14 home runs and 13 stolen bases through the end of May, he was firmly on track for the best power-speed season of his career but not necessarily on pace to do something unprecedented. On June 16, Ohtani hit two home runs in Kansas City to bring his season total to 19 home runs and 15 stolen bases. At that point, 30-30 seemed likely, with 40-40 plausible.

But something else happened in that June 16 game that dramatically altered the course of Ohtani’s season: Betts suffered a fractured left wrist on a hit by pitch. This was a brutal blow for the Dodgers. But Betts’ two-month absence introduced an unexpected dynamic to the top of the Dodgers’ lineup: Ohtani the leadoff hitter.

Rather than keeping Ohtani in the two-hole and replacing Betts with someone else, manager Dave Roberts opted to move his newest superstar to the top of the order. Ohtani had some experience in the role, with 61 games batting leadoff across his six years in Anaheim. So it was a logical solution, if seemingly a temporary one, but still a considerable adjustment for Ohtani to make on the fly after being sandwiched between his fellow MVPs atop the lineup for the first third of the season.

Of course, he responded brilliantly. Ohtani seamlessly adapted to the new challenges — and opportunities — inherent in leading off. He maintained his slugging ways while amplifying his contributions on the basepaths to better embody his new role. Case in point: He launched eight home runs in his first 13 games as the Dodgers’ leadoff man and then swiped 12 bags in July, the most he’d ever collected in a single month in his career.

August, though, is when Ohtani really kicked into overdrive — so much so that when Betts returned to the lineup, it was an easy decision for the Dodgers to keep Ohtani in the leadoff spot. His 12 homers and 15 steals in August made him just the eighth player ever to collect at least 10 homers and 10 stolen bases in a calendar month.

“Specifically with Mookie, he obviously was hurt and was out for a good chunk of the season," Ohtani said Thursday. "I ended up leading off. And when he came back, we decided to make it a priority to make sure that we were communicating with each other so that we have a better flow hitting one and two in the lineup. I think that’s something I’ll continue to do with him as we prepare for the postseason.”

Ohtani joined the 40-40 club in emphatic fashion against the Rays on Aug. 23: After stealing his 40th base of the season in the fourth inning, Ohtani launched a walk-off grand slam for his 40th homer to seal the victory for Los Angeles. The earliest any of the previous five members of the 40-40 club had reached both milestones was Alfonso Soriano in 2006, who stole his 40th base in the Nationals’ 148th game of the season. Ohtani did it in Game No. 129.

This blistering pace opened the door for the unthinkable: a 50-50 season. As Ohtani had already done so many times in his career, the boundaries of what had previously been thought possible on a baseball field were shattered.

And so, he forged ahead and, eventually, turned the impossible into reality.