Shohei Ohtani added yet another item to an already unprecedented résumé on Tuesday.
With a solo homer in the eighth inning against the Philadelphia Phillies, the Los Angeles Dodgers’ star became the sixth player in MLB history to post 50 homers in back-to-back seasons. He had 54 long balls last season, which was the first 50-homer, 50-stolen-base season ever.
Advertisement
Naturally, Ohtani hit this home run after throwing five no-hit innings earlier in the game.
The other five players to post consecutive 50-homer seasons: Babe Ruth (1920-21), Mark McGwire (1996-99), Ken Griffey Jr. (1997-98), Sammy Sosa (1998-2001) and Alex Rodriguez (2001-02). Obviously, McGwire and Sosa later had their runs tainted by steroids, while Rodriguez had his own PED allegations in his career.
On the mound Tuesday, Ohtani struck out five in five hitless innings before manager Dave Roberts pulled him at 68 pitches. His lone blemish: a first-inning walk of Bryce Harper.
Ohtani left the mound with the Dodgers up 4-0, but a Justin Wrobleski meltdown in the sixth inning quickly gave the Phillies the lead. The Dodgers tied the game in the eighth, but one more meltdown from Blake Treinen gave the Phillies a 9-6 win and continued a rough stretch for the Dodgers’ bullpen.
Advertisement
Per Josh Dubow of the Associated Press, the Dodgers became the first team since 1906 to get five no-hit innings from a starting pitcher and then have their bullpen allow at least nine runs.
[Get more Los Angeles news: Dodgers team feed]
Ohtani joins Cal Raleigh and Kyle Schwarber in the 50-homer club this season, making 2025 the third season ever to feature three players hitting 50 homers. The other two were 1998 and 2001, which both had four 50-homer players.
There’s also the fact that Ohtani is the only MLB player ever to hit 50 homers and throw 50 strikeouts in the same season (Ruth stopped pitching regularly the year before his first 50-homer season).
Advertisement
This homer is the latest step in Ohtani’s push for a fourth MVP award and his second in the NL. If he pulls it off, he would join Barry Bonds as the only players to win MVP at least four times (Bonds won seven times), and he’d be the first player to ever win the award multiple times in both leagues.
Since joining the Dodgers, Ohtani’s bat has been better than even his prime with the Angels, with whom he won MVP awards in 2021 and 2023 and finished as runner-up in 2022 (Aaron Judge’s 62-homer season). His return as a pitcher is a work in progress — the Dodgers are still limiting him to five innings per start — but it goes without saying that he has so far delivered on his record-shattering, $700 million contract.
At age 31, Ohtani already has a list of accomplishments unprecedented in baseball — to the point that two seasons with 50 homers is just another fact in the pile.