Angels two-way star Shohei Ohtani put up one of the most amazing seasons we've ever seen and he came away with second place in MVP voting. The remarkable, two-way achievement was historic and deserved every bit the MVP look he got and maybe more, but there were forces that conspired against Ohtani that were out of his control. Let's virtually saunter through it.
Better season than 2021
Ohtani won the MVP unanimously in 2021, posting a 9.0 WAR season thanks to his exploits with the bat, on the bases and on the mound. He had more offensive production in 2021, but he came close in 2022.
2021: .257/.372/.592, 157 OPS+, 26 2B, 8 3B, 46 HR, 100 RBI, 103 R, 26 SB, 4.9 WAR
2022: .273/.356/.519, 145 OPS+, 30 2B, 6 3B, 34 HR, 95 RBI, 90 R, 11 SB, 3.4 WAR
The big gap there is obviously the home runs and it shows up in slugging percentage as well. Still, he wasn't too far off in terms of offensive performance this season in his follow-up to the MVP year.
On the mound, it wasn't really all that close. He was a lot better this season.
2021: 9-2, 3.18 ERA, 141 ERA+, 1.09 WHIP, 156 K, 44 BB, 130 1/3 IP, 4.1 WAR
2022: 15-9, 2.33 ERA, 172 ERA+, 1.01 WHIP, 219 K, 44 BB, 166 IP, 6.2 WAR
WAR isn't the only stat that matters, but if we added it up, he posted 9.6 this season compared to 9.0 last year. If we used Fangraphs' WAR, Ohtani had 8.0 last season and 9.4 in 2022. I'm not sure many would argue against the statement that he was better in 2022.
Best two-way performer in history
We can find examples from way back, over a century ago, of pitchers who were able to bring enough value with their bats to exceed 1.0 offensive WAR, such as Walter Johnson's 1913 MVP season. Don Newcombe produced 2.3 WAR with the bat in 1955 while Don Drysdale put up 2.1 offensive WAR in 1965. Wes Ferrell racked up 2.4 offensive WAR as a pitcher in 1935.
If we sorted for players who pitched in at least five games, 1900 to present, in Major League Baseball, Ohtani and Babe Ruth are the only two players to ever top 3.0 WAR in a season on the offense/position-player side (both twice). Ruth posted 2.1 in 1917, when he was a full-time pitcher (6.5 WAR on the mound), then pushed his offensive game up to a 4.7 WAR in 1918, but he significantly dialed back his pitching, posting 2.3 WAR on the mound. In 1919, Ruth went nuts with the bat and rose to 9.1 WAR, but on the mound, produced only 0.8 WAR and after that he was essentially done pitching.
Ohtani these last two years was over 3.0 WAR in both pitching and on the position-playing side, easily exceeding the mark in each place both years.
The bottom line is this:
Ohtani is the only player in history to top 3.0 WAR in both pitching and position-playing in the same season ... and he's done it twice in a row.
That's right, even the great Babe Ruth didn't excel both ways at the same time -- not even once -- the way Ohtani has done these past two seasons.
But, as noted earlier, there were forces beyond Ohtani's control this season.
Sub-par teammates
Mike Trout knows this story all too well. Though things have loosened up a bit, it's still difficult to win MVP from a bad team. The Angels were 73-89 this season and a whole lot of people remain who will argue that Ohtani can't possibly be "valuable" on a team that doesn't make the playoffs or even approach a winning record.
Of course, Trout has won MVP on a 74-win team (2016) and 72-win team (2019) while Ohtani won MVP in 2021 on a 77-win team. I didn't say it was a hard-and-fast rule, I just said it's much more difficult to win. When presented with an opportunity between two worthy MVP candidates but with one playing on a 99-win team and the other on a non-contender, this will sway some voters.
I don't know if it moved the needle in a major way this season, but I do know that if Ohtani's Angels won 95 games, there would have been a lot more consternation on the vote.
A bigger factor, though, would be 2021 looming over 2022.
Voter/fan fatigue
People weren't, collectively, quite as wowed by Ohtani this season as in 2021 and the answer is pretty simple. In 2021, we'd never seen anything like it. No one had. Even if there were people alive for Babe Ruth, I just illustrated that what Ohtani is doing has never happened before.
In 2022, well, we just saw it last year.
If there's a sequel to a wildly popular movie that comes out the following year and it's arguably just as good or even slightly better, it won't get near the acclaim. It needs to blow the original out of the water for that to happen. Otherwise, our minds are trained to give us a "hey, we just saw this" feeling. Even Top Gun: Maverick, as amazing as it was -- and yes, it's far better than the original -- benefitted from a long period of time between the original and the sequel. Ohtani came with his sequel immediately.
I do think Ohtani was better overall in 2022 than 2021, but it was close. It certainly didn't blow 2021 away.
Legions of people were still excited to watch what Ohtani was doing, but it just wasn't the same as 2021. There wasn't nearly as much fanfare because it wasn't new anymore. It's not fair, but it's reality.
He probably would have won the MVP if he were on the NL side. Alas, he wasn't and there was one more thing working against the repeat MVP.
Up against history
I'm sure there will be those who only read the headline or the introduction and come away believing I think Ohtani should have beaten Aaron Judge for the award or that I'm somehow saying something negative about Judge. That couldn't be further from the truth. I'm good with the Judge vote and I have zero negative things to say about him as a player or person. He's great! By all accounts he's a really good dude, too!
I have no idea how the vote would have gone down if Ohtani's 2021 season didn't happen and the Angels hung around in contention, but given the circumstances, I still think it would have taken a historic season to topple Ohtani.
Judge had a historic season.
He led the majors in home runs, RBI, runs, on-base percentage, slugging percentage and WAR. He had an outrageous 211 OPS+. We know all about how he was the sixth player ever to hit 60 homers in a season, but this was also only the second season since 2001 that a player topped 130 in both runs and RBI (A-Rod in 2007 was the other). The 10.6 WAR had only been done by a position player 27 previous times and 12 of those were Ruth, Willie Mays and Barry Bonds.
It was just an overwhelming case by Judge.
The history made by Judge in addition to fatigue and poor teammate performances conspired to prevent Shohei Ohtani from winning a second straight MVP, but make no mistake: These were the two best two-way performances in baseball history and they happened in back-to-back years by the same player. We're witnessing something incredibly special, even if Ohtani didn't come away with the hardware in 2022.
