51 HRs AND stolen bases?! How Ohtani transformed MLB –

Alden Gonzalez, ESPN Staff WriterSep 19, 2024, 04:55 PM ET

ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.Shohei Ohtani usually sits at the end of the Los Angeles Dodgers’ bench closest to home plate, far from first-base coach Clayton McCullough, who likes to lean against the railing on the other side. But Ohtani will regularly walk the full length of the Dodger Stadium dugout, tablet in hand, and tap McCullough on his back. “Look at this,” Ohtani will say, and then he’ll reveal his latest finding — a new pattern to help him determine when an opposing pitcher might attempt a pickoff or begin his delivery. A shift of his weight. A tilt of his head. A twitch of his glove. Anything to provide the slightest edge for another stolen base.

These interactions have taken place countless times as Ohtani marched toward 50 stolen bases this season, a milestone he reached in the early stages of a dominant performance that solidified a 50/50 season on Thursday. To McCullough, they capture Ohtani’s intuition and reveal how much he cares about the nuances of baserunning.

They also speak to what makes him unique.

Designated hitters are traditionally among the slowest players on a team. And before Ohtani, no full-time DH had ever so much as sniffed 40 stolen bases, let alone 50. The previous leader was Paul Molitor, who stole 31 in 1992, according to ESPN Stats & Information.

Ohtani — who became the first 50/50 (and first 51/51) player in baseball history with a six-hit, three-homer game in a 14-3 rout of the lowly Miami Marlins — has tapped into another realm of singularity by taking advantage of a circumstance provided to those who solely hit. While his teammates are on defense, Ohtani is often plotting his next steal.

“It’s not an accident that he’s gotten here,” said McCullough, who runs the Dodgers’ baserunning program. “This guy puts in a lot of work.”

Ohtani entered this season with a career high of 26 stolen bases, set in 2021. The past two years have seen him combine for 31. And yet Dodgers manager Dave Roberts says Ohtani was “on a mission” to reach 40/40, and potentially even 50/50, dating back to spring training, when he regularly navigated through intense speed-training exercises with strength coach Travis Smith. Knowing he wouldn’t bear the burden of performing as a two-way player, given the elbow surgery that required an entire season of rehab, seemed to narrow his focus.

“There’s nothing to save because you’re not pitching,” Roberts said. “So I do think that this was the year he targeted the offensive production.”

Ohtani set a standard for himself offensively in 2023, when he slashed .304/.412/.654 with 44 home runs and 95 RBIs in 134 games — before another tear of his ulnar collateral ligament and a subsequent oblique strain prevented him from playing beyond Sept. 3. His slash line this year has dropped slightly, to .293/.375/.624. His home run rate, which has him on pace for a career-high 53, has hardly changed. But he’s stealing bases like never before.

What sticks out to McCullough isn’t so much the volume but the efficiency. Ohtani has converted 92.7% of his stolen-base attempts, nearly 25 percentage points higher than his rate from 2021 to 2023. Among the 133 40-plus-steal seasons since 2000, only Ichiro Suzuki (95.7% in 2006), Jimmy Rollins (94% in 2008), Carlos Beltran (93.3% in 2004) and Jacoby Ellsbury (92.9% in 2013) were more efficient. Ohtani has stolen 28 bases in a row, his last caught stealing occurring on July 22. McCullough remembered it vividly and blamed himself. Blake Snell, a lefty, was pitching to Patrick Bailey, considered one of the game’s better throwers, but McCullough wanted Ohtani to push the envelope early. It took a perfect throw and tag to barely get him.

“If you’re going to have a lot of stolen-base attempts, there’s going to be times when guys are going to put it on you,” McCullough said. “You have to be OK with that. And I think once he’s settled in, to being here, you get off to a pretty good start and you get a few, it’s kind of like you trust what you’re seeing and it’s go-go-go. And I think his confidence has just grown.”

The Dodgers immediately gave Ohtani free reign to basically steal when he wanted, but the rate didn’t pick up until about midseason. Ohtani finished June with 16 stolen bases, then accumulated 27 in July and August. Eight more have followed in the first 17 games of September. The uptick coincided with his move into the leadoff spot, but also spanned a time when the Dodgers missed key offensive players like Mookie Betts and Max Muncy for prolonged stretches.

Ohtani, who could become the first full-time DH to win an MVP Award if he can edge out New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor, is on pace to be just the third player to rank at least second in the majors in both home runs and stolen bases in the same season — joining Honus Wagner and Ty Cobb, stars from more than a hundred years ago. Ohtani reached the 40/40 mark at least 21 games faster than anybody else and became the first player to reach even 43/43 before the start of September.

New rules that enlarged bases, introduced a pitch clock and limited pitcher disengagements beginning in 2023 have undoubtedly fostered a more favorable stolen-base environment. The league combined for 3,503 stolen bases in 2023, the highest total since 1987 and 1,017 more than the year before it; the 2024 season has already produced the second-highest total since 2000. But only Elly De La Cruz (64) has stolen more bases than Ohtani this season, even though there are far more who are faster. Ohtani’s average sprint speed (28.1 feet per second) is well above average but still ranks 154th among the 556 players with at least 10 opportunities.

“It’s more than just speed,” McCullough said. “He puts a lot of work into the preparation aspect of it.”

Before each series, McCullough pores through video of the opponents’ relievers and scheduled starters from the stretch position in hopes of picking up patterns for his baserunners to exploit. He’ll often find that Ohtani has done his own studying and will notice tells he did not pick up on. Ohtani’s experience as a pitcher, McCullough believes, has provided a major advantage in that realm.

“He’s got a very good eye for things,” McCullough said. “And then also I think in real time, he sees things and he just acts.”