Shohei Ohtani is the first MLB player this season to reach 6 WAR. He achieved this on the date 6⁄6. (RA9-fWAR)
Shohei made a deal with Belphalegor confirmed.
So Shohei is Satan?
Satani
Put respec to his heritage. Shoheigami
OK
Mark of the beast aka the GOAT
Yesterday was my mom’s birthday and she turned 66. Had to get a few devil jokes in.
Satan San
Miroslav’s brother from another mother!
Who knew 10 year 700 mil would be one of the biggest bargain in baseball history.
Definitely better than Soto’s.
ohtani is the gift that’s keeps on giving on/off the field
Soto is the most overrated player in baseball
Let’s not overreact lol. He may be overpaid, but he’s definitely not the most “overrated”
This! I always say he is a great player but not worth what he was paid.
He will be in a couple years when he’s a full time DH.
Infuriating stuff when he doesn’t run out ground balls.
They gave him that contract entirely based on potential, that he would break out in his prime years, but that remains to be seen.
lmao. He got the contract for finishing top 10 in MVP 5 different times, breaking 5 bWAR 6 times, breaking 150 OPS+ 6 times.
After getting the contract, he finished 3rd in MVP while leading the league in walks, SB, and OBP. He has over a .900 OPS and will get MVP votes this year again.
“Potential” was not a factor in the contract. He’s one of the best players in baseball.
I never said he wasn’t good, but he’s being paid as the best player in baseball so yeah he’s getting paid based on potential for his prime years.
Dude if Ohtani didn’t exist he’d have been the best hitter in the NL over the last handful of years (yes ik he played for the Yankees for a year)
I feel like Soto’s been fine, but Ohtani is definitely better value at the moment.
“at the moment”
I’m pretty sure every moment forever lol. Ohtani has the entirety of Japan and like half of asia behind him. I still can’t believe soto got paid more than him, maaaaassive overpay
at the moment is a wild, wild take
Consider Ohtani is generating $250 million a year in extra revenue for the dodgers, he is criminally underpaid
It’s only 10 year 460 million, per his CBT hit.
Each yeah, Shohei takes 2 million, then the remaining 44 million dollars is put into escrow and invested. Regardless of how much the money grows into, Shohei only gets 680 million at the end of 10 years. Given the stock market performance in the past few years, the Dodgers may end up making money from Shohei’s contract…
It’s probably already paid for itself financially and he’s still the best player of all time every year. They could have paid twice that and it still would have been a fantastic bargain for the Dodgers.
It was a bargain before he played a single game tbf
It’s always who you expect
I know WAR isn’t a like for like real world replacement.
But hypothetically a .500 team with 5 Shohei’s would be .950 if his WAR had real life application.
Which almost works. If you had a starting rotation of just Shohei’s, you’ll conceded about 2 less runs after 6 innings in every game.
And if you had 5 Shohei’s as your 1-5 in the lineup, you’ll score roughly 2 extra runs a game.
The problem is that only one of them can be DH at a time. While I’m sure he is well capable of playing several positions if he wasn’t a pitcher, it’s hard to imagine him pitching and playing a position (besides DH) on his non-pitching days.
Which is admittedly where the comparison falls flat.
There’s also the problem that you can’t clone him.
I just learned about the horse Cuartetera, so, we’re not far off. Right now cloning seems to be ethically limited to “just not humans” so we’ll see how long that lasts. Long gone are the days of dolly the sheep feeling ethically dubious
They used to put him in the outfield after he pitched before the Ohtani rule and he played the outfield in Japan. I don’t know why you get this idea that he can’t play other positions.
He has a grand total of 8.1 innings without a single putout in the outfield in MLB.
The Angels tried it all of seven times.
Ohtani can play in the outfield. He has tried playing shortstop, but apparently he’s not very good at it.
I reject the idea that Shohei is bad at anything.
Maybe too tall for an infielder?
Back in the day it was pretty standard that your infielders were all relatively short, not so much nowadays. Elly De La Cruz is like 6’5”, and he’s not a significant outlier for shortstops.
Elly is for sure an outlier. When agility and change of direction matters more than top speed, slightly shorter dudes have an advantage. I’d bet money Shohei plays a more than serviceable left field though
Perhaps I should have said “not a significant outlier”. My intent is to say that you look at the average build of a shortstop, and it’s consistently growing over the years. Correa used to be “too tall” for a shortstop, and he sort of became a harbinger of what was to come at the position.
Agree that Shohei would be better in the outfield though.
We’ll never see it but I’d honestly love to see him play SS for a season. It’s a shame he’s too valuable at his current role for them to entertain it
Yeah, A-Rod was kind of a turning point with our perception of shortstop builds. Then Tulo. Now we have guys like Elly and Seager.
Feel like it was Ripken who got that trend in motion.
Except even after Ripken, there were still mostly little guys playing short. Even A-Rod kind of did it alone.
Defensive shortcomings are easier to hand wave when you hit 50 homeruns.
That’s not what Sugiya( his former teammate from Ham Fighters ) said. He said Ohtani was very good at SS too
So 5 Shoheis is probably the max defense allows? 3 in the OF (sacrificing some CF defense), 1 as a P hitting for himself, and 1 as the DH for the C or the lightest hitting infielder. Maybe you could swing 6 Shoheis if we think he could learn 1B.
9 Ohtani with each pitching 1 inning and rotating through every position per game. The 9th Ohtani wouldn’t get to pitch home games though
He would be great in the outfield but I think it ends there in terms of other positions at the highest levels.
Would love to see him be the greatest RF ever for a few years tbh
Clone him 8 times and I’m positive all cloned Ohtanis could spend an off-season training and be the best in the league at any position.
Theres someone on YT who doing team with all shohei in game simulation and they’re winning world series. Offense & Pitching is outstanding but defense is funky though getting better with the more playing time.
I think a roster with only 13 players, all Shohei’s, is winning about 140 games.
All love for shohei, but the roster would still need 25 guys to manage fatigue. But IMO, if even the top 5 are shoheis, that team is winning 140 games if the rest of the team is league average guys.
To keep the lineup clean and manage the workload best as possible, I’m having DH/P shohei, two more rotational pitchers that will bat for themselves when they’re up in the pitching order, LF and RF.
Keeps 3 shoheis in the batting lineup, and 3 in the pitching rotation. Plus you can have the two non DH pitchers take up another spot in the batting order on their turns. 4⁄9 batters being shohei wins a lotta games, especially when the guy on the mound is also shohei.
In the show?
OOTP if im not wrong
I saw one of those and I think the catcher kept making a ton of errors.
I’d like to think that, according to this graph, Shohei Ohtani is just as good as two Pete Crow-Armstrongs in a trenchcoat
I mean yes, that’s just how Math works. Manfred you coward, let it happen
Id argue war does shohei a disservice because he’s worth more than two PCAs, but I’m just a PCA hater.
A .500 team is not full of 0 WAR players.
A hypothetical .500 team would have like 0.8 WAR per player right now. Average is not replacement level
You’re thinking about wins above average. A 0 WAR team is expected to have a 48 win season.
A .500 team would be full of 26 1.27 WAR players (assuming everyone has the same WAR).
Shohei is on pace for a 14.9 WAR season. So if you subtract the 1.27 and then multiply that by 5, youre looking at a .922 record. Which is still insane
Neither of you are correct. He is obviously wrong, but you are as well. If you have a .500 team, and Shohei replaces the 6 worst batter and leaves the 3 best, the players replaced would have been below average but well above replacement.
I think the assumption built in was a .500 team of all equally skilled players with identically WARs. So a team full of 0 WAA (wins above average).
If you start talking about some players being better than others then yes adding Ohtani’s would be even more valuable because you’d be adding even more net WAR.
Are you listening, Manfred? If you want REALLY juice ratings, allow human cloning.
Getting to 6 WAR by 6⁄6 is very fast. Also ominous, if the 666 thing is meaningful at all.
FanGraphs’ WAR leaderboard is here: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/war?wartype=1
Lol, the gap between rank 1 and 2 (2.1 WAR) is the same as between rank 2 and 69!
Nice
Didn’t realize there were 69! Players in the MLB. Seems like a lot.
Can’t understand why you get downvoted lol
There should be more to humor than just grepping for all instances of [0-9]! in a comment, IMO.
[0-9]!
Once again, I caution using Fangraphs’ RA9 fWAR because it doesn’t account for strength of defense, and the Dodgers defense is very very good. For this reason, bWAR tells the better picture for RA9 WAR, and Ohtani sits at 5.2 and leads the back by 0.5 WAR vs the massive lead here.
I prefer RA9 fwar for my narrative
Isn’t fangraphs whole shtick that they use FIP? Where does this RA9 version comes from?
War Ensemble by Slayer confirmed new walk up music
Ive always thought somebody should use Raining Blood as their relief pitcher music. It’s awesome live when the lights go down and the kick drums come in.
Even as someone who doesn’t like Slayer, that would be insane
Unfortunately, metal does not seem all that popular amongst players as a whole, let alone closers good enough to have that kind of entrance :(
Commenter referring to the line in War Ensemble “I’ve made my choice: six six six”
Just wanting to share, Slayer is the best band to absolutely crush a workout to
Shohei is good, confirmed.
Currently on pace for 14.95(!) over the season — unless of course he continues to hit like he has the last few weeks, in which case, oh fuck it, I can’t even imagine how high it could go!!!
it is very possible that at the end of this season we will be able to say that there is a cy young winner with a .950 OPS and 160 OPS+ with 5000 plate appearances which has been rewarded with 5 unanimous mvps in 6 seasons
the only way i can put into perspective what this guy is accomplishing is thinking this must have been what it was like to watch michael jackson perform except this is the sports version
Remember when people were seriously arguing Judge was the better player lol?
I mean, he was when Ohtani was at half power
Half power?
2024 only DH but with a ton of SB
Lol, uhhh yeah and at “half power” while recovering from elbow surgery achieved something thats never been done before in creating the 50⁄50 club. Great argument.
Im agreeing with you lol, look at my flair.
Didn’t see it was a different person. But if that’s what he meant then it’s still a terrible argument lol.
of the 2020’s, judge has been the best amongst humans. he’s no ohtani, but still an all-time talent
Didn’t say he wasn’t great. Im saying between the two it’s not close.
He was at the time. Shohei pitched and hit and Judge still had better WAR. Ohtani was only an all-star level pitcher on the angels, and Judge was obviously a better hitter.
Just the fact he’s “only” a great pitcher and great hitter is enough. We’ve fucking only seen that ONE other time in history folks. One fucking other time. And none of us actually saw it. That’s how rare it is.
Mfer both Judge and Ohtani are all time greats. Stop being bitter.
I’m not saying he isn’t great. But he’s not Ohtani.
I feel like Jordan would be a decent comp
Ah yes, The Host coming into his dark powers
Shotan.
Recession indicator
Pretty crazy disparity between bWAR and fWAR.
Top 2 bWAR are Shohei with 5.2 and Sanchez at 4.7.
Phillies pitchers have always gotten huge bonuses from bWAR since the Aaron Nola days
Absolutely. People need to go look at 2018 and compare Nola vs deGrom bWAR. It has always overvalued Phillies pitchers.
It’s also because fWar way overvalues FIP. Chris Sanchez has a 96th percentile GB rate which means more balls in play.
This post is about RA9-WAR, not fWAR for pitchers. But yeah, FIP stinks
I wouldn’t say the stat itself sucks, but more so you disagree the value given to it by the fWAR formula, which is fair. It’s still a fast and easy calculated value that’s a decent predictor of future ERA unless we want to sit around and compare SIERA
OP used Fangraphs’ RA9-WAR which accounts for ballpark factors but does not account for defensive strength. Ohtani still leads in FIP-based fWAR, but not by nearly as much, and Sánchez makes a huge jump over him: 3.6 FIP fWAR vs. 2.2: https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders/war?wartype=0
1.4 is still insane
I had no clue Nick Martinez was on the Rays now and going *off*. Good for him
NL MVP race been over
I don’t understand. Is this Shohei guy supposed to be good at baseball or something?
Red Sox traded us #10 for Caleb Durbin whi sits right at 0.
Fantasy players who have him on their team must be very very happy
Shotanic
Shohei Omentani
He’s be on par with Sánchez if Roberts made a 5-man rotation just like any other team
You assume he would be just as good with less rest.
Yes.
micheal gonzalez Shohei Ohtani 17 31 1994
he does have the face of an anitchrist
Satanic black magic. Sick shit.
While I like rWar more than bWar, I don’t think its really used. I am not sure how it surged in popularity recently.
rWAR is bWAR. Are you referring to RA9-WAR, which is shown here?
I call it rWAR because I am very lazy. But yes I can see it being confusing. I do mean RA9-WAR here.
rWAR is the “correct” name for the WAR used on baseball reference, it was created by a guy who goes by RalleyMonkey, but most people just call it bWAR now because of where it’s hosted.
I know but people just call it bWAR nowadays so I just call RA9-fWAR as rWAR since it uses RA9.
Well, expect everyone else to continue to assume you mean rWAR when you say rWAR, I guess.
Does that bother you so much?
Bothers me as much as insisting on calling an apple a banana would. Which is to say I’m not really bothered but I think you’re not all there upstairs.
In my original post, I used the term separately and in my first reply to you I clarified it. Yet, here you are quibbling about it.
Bothers me as much as insisting on calling an apple a banana would.
In this analogy, it would be more aking to comparing a ripened banana with an unripened one.
Which is to say I’m not really bothered but I think you’re not all there upstairs.
I am not the one being bothered by something someone wrote that is not even directed towards you or insulting them.
It’s surged because it makes Ohtani look a lot better lol
First rule of WAR is you always use the WAR that supports your agenda the most
It only makes Ohtani look a lot better because Ohtani’s been unusually effective at run prevention. I mean his ERA is 0.74 over his first 61 innings, that’s kind of an unusual situation.
Well yeah… that is how it works. I’m just saying if his FIP was 0.74 you would definitely use FIP WAR instead lol
No judgment I would do the same
Yeah bWAR, makes Ohtani and Sánchez look better than the rest of the league
It has more to do with fWAR being better for position players, RA9-WAR being better than FIP based WAR, and fangraphs getting a better website than baseball reference
I think the rise in people understanding stats like FIP more and how it gets used for fwar has actually led to people wanting to use RA9 WAR for pitcher voting.
while fip is a semi-results oriented stat, it doesn’t accurately capture the “lock in” vibe some pitchers have when they go for nobletiger.
Well yeah, when you get to pitch AND hit, lol.
why dont others do it, are they stupid?
Baseball players hate this one trick!
I do think more people should consider getting TWP certification to get around position player pitching rules. You only need to hit 20 innings and then it’s valid for 2 years. Imagine being able to send in your backup catcher in a blowout before the 9th inning! Think of the wonderful benefits, like the marginal increase in ability to load manage your bullpen!
How long until cheap teams take “loaner players” on the tail end of their current contract, and assign a pitcher roster spot to them until they qualify? Probably not against the CBA? Then they can take their new certification back to their old team (for two years+)
It’s common to dominate in all ways when you mature first. Just wait for the other major leaguers to hit puberty.
Why do dodgers fans start about twenty different threads a day about Ohtani on this particular subreddit? Do they not have their own subreddit?
The first player to hit X (round number / integer) WAR has been traditional on r/baseball for many years now. The official Baseball Reference reddit account even does it very regularly.
Here’s an equivalent post from last year, for reference: https://old.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1l9b7w3/aaron_judge_is_the_first_player_to_reach_60_fwar/
Or here’s one from a month ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1sdz1xw/yordan_alvarez_is_the_first_player_to_reach_1/
Or another one: https://old.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1k4gwwb/fernando_tatis_jr_is_the_first_player_this_season/
Here’s one from 5 years ago: https://old.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/nku7fk/vladimir_guerrero_jr_is_now_the_first_player_to/
That doesn’t really account for why this entire subreddit is basically just an Ohtani fan club at this point. Every time he farts some Dodgers fan runs here and starts a new thread about it.
You’re allowed to post content about players that interest you as well, if you want. Don’t let your dreams be dreams!
Allow me to let you in on a little secret. He will be talked about for the rest of baseball’s lifespan. Imagine witnessing this shit in real time that future fans that haven’t even been born yet will lose their minds over and complaining about it. Unreal if you think hitting 6 WAR by the first week in June isn’t significant enough to warrant a post.
Imagine this guy in Babe Ruth’s time.
“How come there are so many newspaper articles about this Ruth guy? Just because he is hitting more home runs than the rest of the league combined, who cares about that?” :-)
