In the fifth year of his utter domination of Major League Baseball, Shohei Ohtani only padded an already astounding résumé.
He hit 55 home runs and led the National League in runs scored, slugging percentage, OPS and total bases; he returned to pitching and posted a 2.87 ERA in 47 innings with 62 strikeouts; he became the first player to hit three home runs and strike out 10 batters in one game (and it came in a playoff game); he went to bat nine times in a World Series game and got on base nine times (tying a World Series record with four extra-base hits along the way); and he was the starting pitcher in Game 7 of the World Series, which his Los Angeles Dodgers won to become the first repeat champion in 25 years.
Ohtani is the heavy favorite to win his fourth MVP Award on Thursday. (Only Barry Bonds has won more than three.) And with three unanimous selections, Ohtani is already the only player with more than one such selection — and there’s a good chance this will be his fourth.
The latest MVP honor will cap a remarkable past five seasons for Ohtani, four of which he has spent as both one of the best hitters in the game and one of the best pitchers. The postseason run was a reminder, as Jeff Passan wrote after Ohtani’s three-homer game in the NLCS,