RANK
|
PLAYER
|
TEAM
|
WAR AS BATTER
|
WAR AS PITCHER
|
TOTAL
|
1
|
Gerrit Cole
|
NYY
|
0.00
|
2.81
|
2.81
|
2
|
Max Muncy
|
LAD
|
2.79
|
0.00
|
2.79
|
3
|
Xander Bogaerts
|
BOS
|
2.72
|
0.00
|
2.72
|
4
|
Nick Castellanos
|
CIN
|
2.72
|
0.00
|
2.72
|
5
|
Zack Wheeler
|
PHI
|
0.18
|
2.52
|
2.70
|
6
|
Byron Buxton
|
MIN
|
2.64
|
0.00
|
2.64
|
7
|
V. Guerrero Jr.
|
TOR
|
2.57
|
0.00
|
2.57
|
8
|
John Means
|
BAL
|
0.00
|
2.42
|
2.42
|
9
|
Jacob deGrom
|
NYM
|
0.40
|
1.99
|
2.38
|
10
|
Shohei Ohtani
|
LAA
|
1.46
|
0.84
|
2.30
|
That’s an old table: spin-king Cole got torched by the Red Sox on Sunday, Byron Buxton is doing his annual ping-pong on the IL, and Shohei single-handedly carried the Angels to a comeback win against the Rays. An updated list, as of Monday morning:
RANK
|
PLAYER
|
WAR AS BATTER
|
WAR AS PITCHER
|
TOTAL
|
1
|
Shohei Ohtani
|
3.2
|
1.3
|
5.5
|
2
|
Jacob deGrom
|
0.6
|
4.4
|
5.0
|
3
|
V. Guerrero Jr.
|
4.6
|
0.0
|
4.6
|
4
|
Zack Wheeler
|
0.1
|
3.8
|
3.9
|
5
|
F. Tatis Jr
|
3.8
|
0.0
|
3.8
|
Shohei Ohtani now ranks as the most valuable player in baseball, according to this method. As a fan of Ohtani, I’m pleased that he’s currently topping the charts.
But is method accurate? Does this give us a reasonable picture of Ohtani’s season?
* * *
Let’s start with the pitching, and compare Shohei Ohtani with the player who currently sits at #2: Mets pitcher Jacob deGrom:
FanGraphs
|
Player
|
Pitching WAR
|
deGrom
|
4.4
|
Ohtani
|
1.3
|
According to FanGraphs, deGrom has been significantly better on the mound this season. Color me surprised: I didn’t know Jacob deGrom was having much of a season. Must be that pesky New York media underreporting his performance.
Jacob deGrom has been absolutely terrific, and Ohtani, just as a pitcher, doesn’t compare to the Mets ace.
But they are not a million miles apart, either. For one thing, Ohtani and deGrom have actually faced the same number of batters this season:
Player
|
Batters Faced
|
ER
|
H
|
HR
|
BB
|
K
|
deGrom
|
287
|
6
|
30
|
3
|
11
|
122
|
Ohtani
|
274
|
17
|
39
|
6
|
31
|
82
|
deGrom has certainly been better than Ohtani in quality, but the quantity of their pitching is close. And just from a quality perspective, Ohtani is hardly a slouch. Jacob deGrom’s K/9 is 14.1…Ohtani is at 12.4. deGrom’s ERA is an absurd 0.69, but Shohei’s ERA is a very respectable 2.58.
If Jacob deGrom were pitching the same number of innings as Cole or Beiber, one would expect a significant margin to exist between the pair. But deGrom has missed starts, and he’s been pulled from games a few times. He’s been brilliant, but he hasn’t been a workhorse.
FanGraphs WAR says that deGrom merits an edge, 4.4 Pitching WAR to 1.3. But another WAR version – the Baseball-Reference versions – has them much closer:
Player
|
FanGraphs
|
BB-Ref
|
Name
|
Pitching WAR
|
Pitching WAR
|
deGrom
|
4.4
|
4.0
|
Ohtani
|
1.3
|
2.4
|
Well…why?
Because FanGraphs uses Fielding-Independent Pitching to calculate pitching WAR, while Baseball-Reference uses Adjusted ERA (ERA+). FIP gives more weight to strikeouts, homeruns, and walks allowed, while ERA+ considers the number of runs scored against a pitcher.
Ohtani has walked a lot more hitters than deGrom, and he has struck out fewer hitters, and he has allowed more homeruns, so FanGraphs argues that deGrom is significantly better. Baseball-Reference says, "well, it’s six runs allowed versus seventeen runs …we’re just going to work from that." That narrows things a little.
This is an important distinction, and it is up to you to decide how you prefer to measure pitching effectiveness. FanGraphs works its math from specific events - how many strikeouts did a pitcher collect, how many homeruns and walks did they allow – and translates those events into wins above replacement. Baseball-Reference begins from the outcome of those events: Baseball-Reference says that from all of the events, how many runs scored? What does that mean in the context of wins?
It’s up to you.
* * *
Which gets us to the hitting side of the equation.
Mercifully, FanGraphs and Baseball-Reference agree on their assessments of Ohtani and deGrom:
Player
|
FanGraphs
|
BB-Ref
|
Name
|
Offensive WAR
|
Offensive WAR
|
deGrom
|
0.6
|
0.6
|
Ohtani
|
3.2
|
3.1
|
deGrom has had an exceptionally lucky season at the plate. A .189 hitter coming into the season, deGrom is currently hitting (checks notes) .414 on the season. He’s turned into Rod Carew circa 1977.
We can break that down further: deGrom has had 29 plate appearances, collecting 11 single and one double. That is a very fine season…it is a season that would make Zack Greinke proud, if Zack Grienke cared about nonsense like a pitcher’s hitting.
But Ohtani has been just a touch more productivewith the bat:
Player
|
PA
|
1B
|
2B
|
3B
|
HR
|
BB
|
SB
|
deGrom
|
29
|
11
|
1
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
0
|
Ohtani
|
292
|
25
|
17
|
4
|
25
|
32
|
11
|
This is an unfair comparison, of course. Jacob deGrom has had some good luck on ground balls finding their way into the outfield. Shohei Ohtani has a slugging percentage that would make Babe Ruth jealous: he is one of the very best offensive players in the major leagues.
So let’s look at real hitters. FanGraphs says that Ohtani’s offense is comparable to Baltimore CF Cedric Mullins, and Reds LF Nick Castellanos:
Player
|
PA
|
HR
|
SB
|
wRC+
|
WAR
|
Castellanos
|
309
|
14
|
2
|
165
|
3.3
|
Mullins II
|
330
|
13
|
12
|
151
|
3.2
|
Ohtani
|
292
|
25
|
11
|
174
|
3.2
|
This seems odd. Castellanos and Mullins have better batting averages than Shohei, but Ohtani walks more often, and he has a significantly better slugging percentage. So how are they this close on offensive production?
Easy. Positional adjustment:
Player
|
Off
|
Def
|
WAR
|
Castellanos
|
25.9
|
-3.5
|
3.3
|
Mullins II
|
20.9
|
-0.7
|
3.2
|
Ohtani
|
27.7
|
-6.3
|
3.2
|
Ohtani is viewed – rightly – as the most productive offensive player of the trio, but he is dinged by WAR’s defensive adjustment. While Mullins’ 20.9 runs are measure against the offensive output of his peer centerfielders, and Castellanos’ offensive output is translated into wins for a corner outfielder, Ohtani’s defensive adjustment considers him a designated hitter, because for most of his at-bats he is a designated hitter.
Which is perfectly reasonable. And also absolutely unreasonable.
Shohei Ohtani is a DH five days a week because he is a starting pitcher every sixth day.
Shohei every bit as qualified to be considered a pitcher as Jacob deGrom: they’ve faced the same number of hitters, pitched nearly the same number of innings.
But Jacob deGrom - who isn’t anyone’s idea of major league hitter - is currently getting a lot of credit from WAR, for some lucky singles and a double. Shohei Ottani – one of the ten best hitters in baseball – gets demerits.
What is the justification for that?
But – devil’s advocate - what are you going to do?
* * *
What should we do? How should we understand Ohtani’s offensive contributions?
Is it reasonable to contextualize his hitting among the game’s designated hitters?
Of course not. It’s preposterous. Shohei Ohtani isn’t Nelson Cruz or J.D. Martinez, and it is ludicrous to reduce how we interpret his offensive production because he takes the hill every sixth day.
Phrased differently: Ohtani is only a DH because he is a capable starting pitcher. He is fast, and his baseball instincts are off the charts, and he has a canon arm. If he wasn’t a starting pitcher, he’d likely be a hybrid of Aaron Judge and Mookie Betts as a defensive player. He would rack up significant contributions as a defensive player. Instead, he is asked to rack up contributions as a starting pitcher.
But how to measure Ohtani’s contributions is a harder question. A decent compromise might be to adjust his offense within the context of a better position player than DH. Perhaps his contributions as a hitter should be interpreted as a centerfielder or a middle infielder.
But that might undersell him, too.
At the same time, it’s nonsense to credit him for defensive work that he doesn’t do. And Ohtani is being credited for the outs he makes as a starting pitcher. So how do you answer the question of positional adjustment?
Maybe the problem is the statistic itself.
WAR aims to understand players through the players that are like them, the players that might replace them. How many more runs does Vladimir Guerrero produce over a replacement-level first baseman? How many wins does Jacob deGrom get the Mets over a replacement-level starting pitcher?
WAR finds convincing answers to those questions. I am not trying to drag us into another ‘WAR is terrible’ argument. WAR gets us close to a good answer.
But there is no replacement level for Shohei Ohtani, because there is no parallel to what he is doing right now. If he were injured, the Angels their best starting pitcher and their best hitter. That isn’t one replacement the Angels would have to scramble for, but two. He is doing the work of two players.
WAR can’t accurately measure Ohtani’s contributions because the bedrock of the metric imagines a narrower band of capacities than Ohtani contributes. Like fantasy baseball servers, WAR wasn't designed to anticipate a player capable of being an elite starting pitcher and an elite hitter.
There is no 'replacement level' for Ohtani because his replacement doesn’t exist.
* * *
Just to chime in on another angle: there is no parallel for what Shohei Ohtani is doing right now. Even Babe Ruth isn’t a comparable.
Babe Ruth had seasons where he was a very, very good pitcher, and Babe Ruth had a few passable years with the bat. Given a century of distance, the casual fan tends to blur those two facts, imagining that they happened in parallel.
They didn’t. Babe Ruth’s best years as a pitcher came before he was understood as anything except an oddball hitter. His seasons as the game’s greatest hitter came after he had largely ceased to be an effective pitcher.
Ruth’s best pitcher-and-hitter seasons were 1918 and 1919:
Player
|
PA
|
HR
|
OPS+
|
IP
|
ERA
|
ERA+
|
Ruth '18
|
317
|
11
|
192
|
166.1
|
2.22
|
122
|
Ruth '19
|
432
|
29
|
217
|
133.1
|
2.97
|
102
|
Ruth was not a full-time hitter each year (though he paced the league in homeruns both seasons), and he wasn’t a full-time pitcher, at least not within the contexts of that era.
And he wasn’t an elite pitcher. He was good in 1918 and then a league-average starter in 1919, when he set the single-season HR mark in 1919. He was a spot-starter then, but his arm wasn’t what it had been in his prime.
Shohei Ohtani is excelling at both sides of the game:
Player
|
PA
|
HR
|
OPS+
|
IP
|
ERA
|
ERA+
|
Ruth '18
|
317
|
11
|
192
|
166.1
|
2.22
|
122
|
Ruth '19
|
432
|
29
|
217
|
133.1
|
2.97
|
102
|
Ohtani '21
|
297
|
26
|
172
|
59.1
|
2.58
|
178
|
And he has speed. That can get glossed over. Ohtani has eleven stolen bases, and he leads the league with four triples. Ruth wasn’t fast.
Ohtani won’t eclipse Ruth’s offensive production from 1919, but he is comfortably ahead of Ruth’s production as a starting pitcher. If he stays healthy and effective, Shohei Ohtani’s 2021 season will be the greatest dual-role season baseball has ever seen.
And if we can get the metrics aligned right, we might understand it as the greatest season ever.
David Fleming is a writer living in southwest Virginia. He welcomes comments, questions, and suggestions here and at dfleming1986@yahoo.com.