Shohei Ohtani passes Babe Ruth in career strikeouts

Ohtani's mastery at the plate and on the bump continues to amaze us, not only because generations have gone by without seeing a single player perform like the Angels star but because he remains the source of baseball's greatest meme.

The meme was alive once again as the defending champs defeated the Halos 3-1. Framber Valdez was nearly perfect, striking out 12 over eight innings, and Martin Maldonado hit a three-run homer in the fifth.

The reality about the Ohtani and Ruth comparisons is that Ohtani is actually hitting and pitching in the same game, something Ruth didn't do. In fact, Deadspin's Sam Fels highlights a truth about Ruth's two-way status:

"Ruth was only a full-time starter for three seasons in Boston when he first came up. The Sox occasionally used him as a pinch-hitter, but his hitting was restricted to the days he pitched. In 1915-1917, Ruth never had more than 150 plate appearances while starting 32, 44, and 41 games in those seasons. It was only in 1918, something of a poignant year in Red Sox history, that they figured out that he could hit a little bit and started punting him to the outfield on days he didn’t pitch. 1919 was the first season he started more than 100 games in the outfield, and then when he was sold to New York, the Yankees started their 84-year stretch of outsmarting the Sox by ever preventing him from taking the mound again. So Ruth never combined both at the same time."

With this in mind, perhaps we should reconsider how to note Ohtani's performances. They are unique on their own, with or without a direct comparison to The Babe.