By Jared Diamond

Shohei Ohtani has already shown many times over that he is quite possibly the most talented player ever to step onto a baseball field.

He has won four MVP awards and two World Series championships. He is the only man ever to produce 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in the same year. He is responsible for what looked like the greatest single-game performance in major-league history, only to top it a year later.

But Ohtani still isn't satisfied. He has entered 2026 with perhaps his most preposterous goal yet: MLB's best hitter also wants to be recognized as MLB's best pitcher.

"It's fair to say," Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said earlier this spring, "he expects to be in the Cy Young conversation."

The idea of Ohtani beating out the likes of Paul Skenes and Yoshinobu Yamamoto for the Cy Young sounds absurd on its face. For the past seven decades, the prize has been reserved for people who have dedicated their entire lives to the craft of throwing a ball 60 feet, 6 inches at alarming speed and with devastating precision. Ohtani, meanwhile, has a whole other full-time job as a dominant hitter.

No Cy Young winner has hit more than 35 home runs in his entire career. Ohtani hit 20 more than that in 2025 alone. Not since Babe Ruth has anyone come along with precisely this set of skills.

But unlike Ruth, who gave up pitching once he established himself as a prodigious slugger, Ohtani actually does both at the same time. There is something magical about seeing Ohtani polish off his first inning on the mound, then immediately grab a bat and head to the plate without ever stopping in the dugout.

Those two-way aspirations have come at a steep cost. Ability has never been the obstacle preventing Ohtani from total pitching dominance. Among all pitchers who have logged at least 500 innings since 2018, only Jacob deGrom and Clayton Kershaw have a better ERA than Ohtani's mark of 2.93. That's what happens when you have a fastball that reaches 100 miles per hour, a disappearing splitter and an array of breaking balls with inconceivable movement.

The larger issue for Ohtani has always been health. He has undergone two significant elbow surgeries since leaving Japan for MLB eight years ago. Even when Ohtani has been available, his teams have treated himi with extreme caution, often giving him extra rest between appearances to help him recover from his unprecedented training regimen.

As a result, Ohtani has never thrown more than 166 innings in a season. Even in an era where the 200-inning starter has gone the way of the flannel uniform, Ohtani would need to log more innings to garner serious Cy Young consideration.

Ohtani, who will celebrate his 32nd birthday in July, believes he can accomplish that. For the first time since he signed his $700 million contract with the Dodgers, Ohtani isn't rehabbing an arm injury. He is, for now, fully healthy. He has no set innings limit from the Dodgers -- and he is expecting a workload that reflects as much.

"If at the end the result is getting a Cy Young," Ohtani said, "that's great."

He is off to a perfect start. In his first outing of the season last week, Ohtani allowed just one hit over six shutout innings against the Cleveland Guardians. He followed that up against the Toronto Blue Jays on Wednesday, surrendering just one unearned run over six frames, keeping his season ERA at 0.00.

Ohtani has now gone 28 2/3 innings without allowing an earned run, dating back to last season. It's the longest active streak in MLB. (His 43 consecutive games reaching base at least once is also the longest active streak in the league.)

"He seems like he's on a mission, pitching-wise," Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. "Whenever we've seen him on a mission, good things happen."

It's a mission Ohtani has been on for years. There have been plenty of opportunities for Ohtani to give up pitching and focus all his efforts on hitting. But he continues to pitch because it constitutes a fundamental part of his identity. He finds a different sort of fulfillment on the mound than he does at the plate, and it shows in his demeanor.

As a batter, Ohtani looks relaxed. On the mound, he looks intense, as if he still has something to prove.

"When he's pitching, he sees himself solely as a pitcher," Roberts said. "And he wants to be the best pitcher."

A Cy Young would solidify his case. It would also be his most improbable achievement yet.

Then again, this is Shohei Ohtani, so it might not be surprising at all.

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

April 10, 2026 07:00 ET (11:00 GMT)