Shohei Ohtani Strikes Out Career-High 13 Batters One Day After 2 HR/8 RBI Night
Every time Shohei Ohtani is at the plate or on the mound, it is must-watch television for not just Major League Baseball fans, but sports fans in general.
He is truly a spectacle of sport and continues to amaze in just about everything he does. Take his last two games for example.
The Los Angeles Angels were finishing up a three-game home series against the Kansas City Royals, but the Royals took game one pretty comfortably.
Ohtani didn't let that get to his head in game two, hitting two home runs and driving in a career-high eight runs on the day, including this mammoth three-run homer to tie up the game at 10-10 in the ninth.
The Angels, even with what Ohtani did, never led once in the game and lost, 12-11, in extra innings. It's the first time since RBIs were counted as a stat that a player had an eight-RBI game and his team never led once.
From there, let's go over to the pitching side of things because Ohtani started the series finale on Wednesday and put on the performance of his career to date.
In eight shutout innings, Ohtani struck out a career-high 13 batters, giving up just two hits in the process.
No player in MLB history has ever done what Ohtani did in two consecutive games...EVER.
We're not even kidding about that. No one, since RBIs became an official stat in 1920, has ever drove in 8+ RBI and struck out 10+ hitters in consecutive games.
Something even more crazy is that in those two games, Ohtani raised his fWAR (FanGraphs WAR) up one full win, adding 0.4 fWAR offensively and 0.6 fWAR on the pitching side of things.
That's the kind of dominant player that he is and he's become in MLB. In literally a span of two days, Ohtani can flip the script on its head and do things no player has ever done before.
He's raised his average to .260 on the year with 15 home runs, 45 RBI and a 132 OPS+. On the mound, he's 6-4 with a 2.90 ERA, a 2.77 FIP, 90 strikeouts in 68.1 innings pitched and a 138 ERA+.
There is truly nothing more we can say about how good he is on the field because there is nothing else to say. Shohei Ohtani is one-of-a-kind.
