Obviously, being a two-way player and being able to do it at an All-Star level helps you become one of the elite players in the sport. But how would you rank him if he wasn’t the two-way? As a hitter and as a pitcher. IMO he’s a better hitter than he is a pitcher but he hasn’t really had a full year to showcase himself as a pitcher (not a single season in which he had 30 or more starts)?
But is he up there with Trout, prime Cabrera, Judge as a hitter alone? Or prime Kershaw, Verlander, and deGrom as a pitcher?
I had this whole, big long thing written, and then I accidentally closed the tab.
In a very, very brief summary, which I can go into in more detail at some later point, Ohtani does not compare to guys like Trout or Cabrera purely as a hitter. He's not even close. For players at roughly his age, Ohtani is a lot closer to guys like Juan Gonzalez or Magglio Ordonez as a hitter, in terms of value (not necessarily in terms of hitting style). He's not dissimilar to some future Hall of Famers at roughly age 28, like Dave Winfield, Tony Gwynn, Ernie Banks, Billy Williams, or Heinie Manush (spot the one that doesn't belong), but they played for a very long time (or were inexplicably elected for some unfathomable reason). Basically, Ohtani has been an excellent hitter, but lots of guys have been as good as he was at the same age, and not all of them became legends.
As a pitcher, we have three reasonably full seasons and a little bit extra. Over these three seasons, Ohtani has put up an excellent 152 ERA+ in 428.1 innings. That's pretty similar to Kershaw over the past four (157 ERA+, 411.2 IP), but that's Kershaw's decline phase - Kershaw's prime blows Ohtani way out of the water (2013-14, Kershaw put up a 196 ERA+ in 434.1 innings). That's just one pitcher, and virtually every great pitcher has two seasons as good or better than Ohtani's three, plus many, many more. Ohtani is like Herb Score before he got hurt (153 ERA+, 476.2 IP), or Jose Fernandez before he died (150 ERA+, 471.1 IP) - basically, he's a "what could have been" case.
As an aside, I do
not believe we should be making any accommodations for modern pitcher usage patterns. Teams are choosing to move innings, and thus value, to the bullpen - that doesn't create any more value, it simply reallocates it, and starting pitchers are just going to lose out. That's too bad for them, but I can't see adjusting anything on that basis - all you're doing is adding runs that do not exist.
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Taken together, Ohtani has put up three really, truly outstanding seasons - 28.2 WAR, an average of 9.4 per season. That's not exactly unheard of, though it is extremely remarkable, even among a number of no-doubt greats, though it's easy to overstate how good it is - we are not talking about the greatest peak of all time or anywhere near it, or even in recent history (Trout's peak was even better, and he has put up a lot more value around it).