For the first six seasons of Shohei Ohtani’s major-league career, October was just about the only month we didn’t talk about him. Throughout the spring and summer, no matter where his team sat in the standings, Ohtani’s routinely historic on-field feats demanded attention and inspired awe league-wide. Eventually, though, the Angels would be mathematically eliminated, and our focus would shift to the teams still in contention for the Commissioner’s Trophy.
As soon as the World Series concluded each year, Ohtani’s relevance would resurface during awards season as he collected his annual array of honors, prompting discourse about how we had yet to see the planet’s most talented player on baseball’s biggest stage. “How cool would that be?” we thought to ourselves, imagining Ohtani in the postseason. “Maybe — hopefully — someday.”
That collective curiosity about what it would be like to watch Ohtani play in meaningful games was only amplified by his epic performance in the 2023 World Baseball Classic. A tournament that began with spectacular showings in pool play in his native Japan concluded in Miami with a strikeout of then-Angels teammate Mike Trout to clinch the championship for Samurai Japan over a star-studded Team USA. Although it happened in March and not October, it was immediately obvious that Ohtani’s splendid sweeper to strike out Trout would be replayed for years to come, a highlight that would endure for generations.
Still, we yearned for more. And for a brief stretch during his final season in Anaheim — the Angels were 56-51 at the end of July 2023 and aggressive buyers at the trade deadline — it seemed plausible that Ohtani might finally reach the MLB postseason. Then the Angels catastrophically collapsed down the stretch, solidifying that Ohtani’s sixth and final season in Anaheim would also be of the losing variety.
And so, Ohtani entered free agency almost a year ago in search of his first winning MLB season, let alone a trip to the playoffs. While his time on the open market featured its fair share of drama, he ultimately landed where most expected he would: with the Dodgers for a record-setting amount of money. It wasn’t just that L.A. boasted the deepest pockets and played not far from where Ohtani already resided. This was also a team that had been to 11 consecutive postseasons. From the moment Ohtani put on his new threads at his introductory media conference, it was virtually guaranteed that we would get to watch him in the postseason the following fall, a certainty that no other team could offer.
What was not certain, however, was what would happen once Ohtani and the Dodgers actually arrived in October. Just three of the team’s 11 straight trips to the playoffs had featured a berth in the World Series, and the Dodgers were bounced in the first round the previous two years. No matter how much talent the organization aggressively assembled, the brutal parity of the postseason had routinely derailed the Dodgers’ championship ambitions earlier than expected.
After all those recent near-misses, the Dodgers entered 2024 hoping that Ohtani could help spark a more successful playoff run.
It was obvious early in his professional career that Ohtani not only was comfortable playing in high-stakes situations but also thrived in them. While the World Baseball Classic might have been our first glimpse of this dynamic stateside, it was certainly not Ohtani’s first time playing in pressure-packed games.
Before he arrived in MLB, Ohtani became a singular sensation playing in Nippon Professional Baseball, the second-best league in the world and one with tremendous history and cultural relevance in baseball-obsessed Japan. The pinnacle of Ohtani’s NPB career came in 2016, when he put together his first complete season as a two-way player, winning league MVP and helping lead the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters to the Japan Series title. That included Ohtani’s walk-off single in Game 3 of the best-of-seven against Hiroshima, which helped spark a comeback after the Fighters dropped the first two games of the series.
As such, it came as no surprise that when Ohtani made his MLB postseason debut with the Dodgers, he made an immediate impact. In his second at-bat of NLDS Game 1 against San Diego, Ohtani torched a game-tying, three-run homer over the right-field fence, injecting energy into the Dodgers dugout and crowd after they had fallen into an early deficit. Although he was relatively quiet for the remainder of the series against the Padres, Ohtani heated back up against the Mets in the NLCS, reaching base a ridiculous 16 times across six games (a franchise record) to help exhaust a New York pitching staff that couldn’t stop L.A.’s overwhelming offense.
With each successive game increasing in importance, Ohtani keeps raising the bar. Through 11 games in October, he is slashing .286/.434/.500. His production with runners in scoring position is almost too good to be true: Ohtani is 6-for-9 this October and 18 for his past 23 at-bats dating to mid-September, with an astonishing 28 runs driven in over that span.
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Next up for Ohtani and the Dodgers are the Yankees, the only team in baseball that features as much, if not even more, star power as Los Angeles. One of those opposing stars is Juan Soto, who has also played a massive part in his team’s push to and through the postseason in his first year with his club. Soto’s trade to the Yankees and Ohtani’s signing with the Dodgers — both of which occurred over the span of a week in December — were the defining transactions of last offseason and two of the more industry-shaking hot-stove happenings in recent memory.
At the time, though, the tone surrounding each move was different.
For the Yankees, coming off their worst season in nearly three decades, sending a haul to San Diego to acquire Soto with just a year remaining on his contract was an urgent maneuver intended to reestablish their status as one of the league’s powerhouse teams after an uncharacteristically poor 2023. In that case, it felt like the Yankees needed Soto more than he needed them.
Conversely, the Dodgers adding Ohtani to a roster that already featured multiple MVPs felt like the ultimate flex of baseballing luxury more than something the team desperately needed. The Dodgers were offering Ohtani the opportunity to play in a winning situation for the first time as a big-leaguer, but they were contenders without him.
As it turned out, the Dodgers needed Ohtani more than we ever could’ve imagined. When Mookie Betts missed two months due to a broken hand, Ohtani slid into the leadoff spot and elevated his game to a whole new level, sparking unprecedented power-speed production that resulted in the first 50 HR/50 SB season. A barrage of injuries also left what was thought to be a deep pitching staff in disarray, putting more pressure on the Ohtani-led offense to outscore the opposition for extended stretches. The two-time MVP delivered at every turn, playing his best ball in September and helping the Dodgers edge San Diego for another NL West title.
And so, while the Dodgers provided the stage and the supporting cast Ohtani had been searching for, he has been a driving force behind this World Series appearance. It took seven years for him to finally get to this point, but now he and the Dodgers are four wins away from their ultimate goal.
Even considering how long his contract is, there are no guarantees of how many more times Ohtani will get to this point. That’s all the more reason to appreciate how quickly it came together and savor the spectacle that now stands before us: Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers in the World Series against the New York Yankees.
