On Sunday, the final day of the regular season, Shohei Ohtani became the first Japanese player to lead a major league in home runs in the United States. With 44 hits, Ohtani won the American League.
Despite appearing in just 135 games before to requiring season-ending elbow surgery last month, the two-way great accomplished the accomplishment.
Since 2004, when Ichiro Suzuki led both leagues in average and won his second AL batting title as a member of the Seattle Mariners, he is the only Japanese player to win an MLB batting crown.
It’s both humble and an honor to consider the outstanding Japanese players who have competed in the major leagues of the United States up until this point. “My teammates and fans have my gratitude,” Ohtani stated in a statement.
Ohtani is the clear frontrunner to win the AL MVP award twice this year after being voted the Los Angeles Angels’ team MVP for the third consecutive season on Saturday.
In his six-year MLB career, he set career highs with a batting average of.304, an on-base percentage of.412, and a slugging average of.654. In 132 innings pitched, he finished 10-5 with a 3.14 ERA, striking out 167 hitters. Over the winter, he is anticipated to sign a record-breaking deal as an MLB free agent.
This season, Ohtani led the AL by five home runs over Texas’s 39, but his 44 home runs ranked fourth in the MLB behind Atlanta’s Matt Olson’s 54.
Ohtani hit a career-high 46 home runs in 2021, when he was the AL’s unanimous pick for MVP. He finished third in both the AL and MLB, two behind Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero and Kansas City’s Salvador Perez.
When Ohtani hit his 44th in the Angels’ second game against Cincinnati on August 23, he looked to be on pace to eclipse that total. That proved to be his final pitching day as well; he left the first inning after just four batters due to what was later determined to be ligament damage in his right elbow.
Ohtani’s season came to an end on September 4 during pre-game hitting practice due to an oblique muscle injury, despite the fact that he remained the Angels’ designated hitter.
After realizing he wouldn’t be able to bat again, Ohtani had surgery on the same right elbow that had been medically repaired during his 2018 MLB debut season.
He hopes to resume being a two-way player in 2025 and hit exclusively in 2024 following surgery.
In his debut season of 2001, Suzuki tied Colorado Rockies’ Larry Walker for the MLB’s best hitting average of.350 and led both leagues with 56 stolen bases, earning him his first batting crown in the AL.
That season, the standout outfielder took home the AL Rookie of the Year and MVP awards. In 2004, he hit 262 hits in a season to set an MLB single-season record, averaging.372.
In his first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995, Japanese MLB trailblazer Hideo Nomo led the NL in strikeouts (236) among pitchers. With 220 strikeouts in 2001, he led the American League while playing for the Boston Red Sox.
In 2013, Yu Darvish of the Texas Rangers of the AL topped both leagues with 277 strikeouts. He is currently with the San Diego Padres. In the pandemic-shortened 2020 season, he earned eight wins for the National League’s Chicago Cubs, becoming the first pitcher from Japan to lead a major league in victories.