One of the Dodgers’ top hitters in 2023 was Shohei Ohtani; would he be even better in 2024 without pitching fatigue?
The individual Because Shohei Ohtani is the best and most well-known baseball player in the world, he recently signed the biggest contract in MLB history, much to the Dodgers’ eternal gratitude.
His unparalleled skill both on the mound and at the plate accounts for all of that.
But as you know, Ohtani will not be able to pitch for the Dodgers in 2024 as he heals from surgery he had in September to repair a tear in his throwing elbow’s UCL.
That implies that Ohtani will be “just” a hitter for his new squad in the upcoming season.
Because Ohtani established himself as one of the finest batters in baseball this past season, the term “just” is softly mocked with quotation marks.
His 2023 plate totals are indicative of a skill-driven performance, and he looks to remain one of the most prolific batmen in MLB for the foreseeable future.
In order to prepare for Ohtani’s bat-only 2024 season in Los Angeles, let’s examine the current form of the great hitter and the reasons he’ll likely continue to do so for some time to come.
Let’s start by appreciating what he accomplished with the bat in 2023.
With an MLB-high 325 total bases and an AL-high 44 home runs, Ohtani recorded a slash line of.304/.412/.654 in 135 games as the Angels’ designated hitter.
Ohtani led all MLB qualifiers in OPS+ this past season with a mark of 184, which is OPS adjusted to account for home ballpark effects and league circumstances.
This indicates that his park-adjusted OPS was 84% higher than the league average. With Corey Seager of the Rangers in second place with an OPS+ of 170, Ohtani had a rather wide league lead.
We can also use an other, even more insightful statistic known as weighted on-base average, or WOBA.
WOBA gives each potential offensive occurrence the appropriate value.
Ohtani’s average exit velocity off the bat from 2018 to 2022 was 92.6 mph, which is already extraordinary (the MLB average is 88.4 mph).
Nonetheless, Ohtani’s average exit velocity skyrocketed to 94.4 mph in 2023, placing him in the 99th percentile among MLB batters.
Only Aaron Judge and Acuña had greater average statistics in the previous season. Ohtani’s 2023 barrel rate of 19.6% was in the 100th percentile, which measures the hitter’s proportion of batted balls that leave the bat at the optimal launch angle and exit velocity for power creation.
Put differently, Ohtani’s exaggerated power figures were well-deserved. Ohtani’s top-line average of 118.6 mph was not a career-high exit velocity, but it was still an impressive performance.
