Los Angeles Angels two-way player Shohei Ohtani joins baseball legend Babe Ruth with an unreal statistic.
Upon signing with the Los Angeles Angels, the MLB world expected big things out of Shohei Ohtani. The two-way player had received plenty of comparisons to baseball legend Babe Ruth for his skills in the batter’s box and pitcher’s mound, leaving some baseball fans scoffing at the notion. But so far this season, Ohtani’s play is backing up the comparisons.
Entering Monday’s start against the Texas Rangers, Ohtani led the league with seven home runs. With that, Ohtani is now the first pitcher to lead MLB in homers since Babe Ruth did so back in 1921. That’s right, this has not happened in over 100 years.
Angels: Shohei Ohtani becomes first pitcher to start a game while leading league in home runs since Babe Ruth
Ruth was the last pitcher to accomplish this feat back in a June 13, 1921 start against the Detroit Tigers. At the time of that game, Ruth had led the league with 19 home runs. 100 years later, Ohtani starts his game while leading all of baseball with seven homers.
In his outing against the Rangers, Ohtani struck out nine batters while allowing four earned runs on three hits (one home run) in five innings. Ohtani went two-for-three in the batter’s box, where he knocked in two runs on a double in the top of the second inning.
Entering this game, Ohtani recorded a .286 batting average, .321 on-base percentage an .662 slugging percentage while tallying seven homers, 16 RBI, 14 runs scored and 22 hits. Additionally, Ohtani had only started tow games, where he owns a 1.04 ERA and 14 strikeouts over 8.2 inning of work.
Ohtani can now say he has done something that has not been accomplished in a century in baseball. That is awesome.