Los Angeles Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani has been making history for three years now as the greatest two-way player the sport has ever seen.
He has not only exceeded all expectations in his ability to star as both a hitter and starting pitcher, but he also somehow manages to keep getting better. And the 2023 season is looking like his best season yet.
Even though the Angels were on the losing end of a 9-7 decision to the Chicago White Sox on Thursday afternoon, Ohtani still managed to slug his Major League leading 29th home run of the season, giving him a whopping 14 home runs in the month of June.
It also helped him extend his lead in several other major categories.
Entering play on Friday Ohtani leads all of Major League Baseball in the following categories:
As if all of that is not enough, he is also hitting .309 (eighth in the Majors), with a .392 on-base percentage (10th) and 11 stolen bases.
He is objectively speaking the best hitter in baseball this season.
That alone would make him the top free agent on the market this winter and one of the best free agents in recent memory.
But that is before you factor in his pitching dominance. He is sporting a 3.02 ERA (top-15 in the Majors) and has the third most strikeouts (127) in the league while averaging more than 12 per nine innings (second best in the Majors).
His presence is basically the same as having Ronald Acuna and Gerrit Cole all in one player.
Nobody in the history of the sport has ever done all of this at the same time. He is not just a generational player, he is a historic player. There is nobody else like him, has never been anybody else like him and may never be anybody else like him. No matter how much attention he gets for what he is doing, it is still probably being undersold. This is simply not supposed to happen at this level.
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