How should we think about Shohei Ohtani?

What is WAR supposed to help us assess anyways?

One of the great things about baseball is that in small cities and towns across the country, you can still see the MLB hopefuls playing out their ambitions. Each cracking wooden bat shouts or splinters the hope of a major-league appearance. Indeed, the minor league baseball system—which MLB recently reformed to concentrate the teams—is home to many of the “replacement players” that we allude to in statistics like WAR.

WAR (Wins Above Replacement), is a statistic that attempts to measure how much better a player is than their replacement. That is, if they got hurt and had to be replaced by a highly-available player, how much worse off would the team be?

The idea behind this metric has an intuitive appeal. And we can see it in action when a star, like the Yankees’ Aaron Judge—who had a league-leading 10.4 WAR in the 2022 season—goes down. When the star is missing and the team is worse, that is what WAR looks and feels like.

Enter Shohei Ohtani: the pitching, hitting hero of Anaheim Los Angeles. Over the past three seasons he has posted impressive WAR numbers, combining his pitching and hitting, but rather modest numbers in isolation. This is made worse by his occupation of the team’s Designated Hitter slot—the easiest offensive position to fill, and one that contributes nothing defensively.

This type of performance is impressive in that it is unique if nothing else. We have not seen players do this before. But how valuable is this combination of skills? And should we be so quick to combine Ohtani’s WARs? Or is it best to think about pitching and hitting as we have for 100 years: two separate disciplines with different contributions?

The argument for combining them is simple: one player is doing both of these things. If Ohtani was hurt, the Angels would need to replace his combined efforts—pitching and hitting. Therefore, Ohtani should get credit for the wins he accounts for in both places.

The argument against is that it’s not that hard to replace one player who bats and pitches with one batter and one pitcher.

Now, at Ohtani’s current performance levels, this is made more difficult. Ohtani is a top 50 batter and a top 25 pitcher. He has a shot at being the best pitcher and the second best hitter on most teams. But as he ages, the math will rapidly shift. Replacing a 10 WAR player is impossible. Replacing a 4 WAR player is hard, but replacing a 2 WAR player is much, much less difficult. And replacing a 1 WAR player is hardly difficult at all.

Does it matter if you need to replace this performance with one or two players? No.

In fact, that’s already what is going on. The Dodgers replace Mookie Betts pitching with Klayton Kershaw. That’s how they choose to use those two roster spots.

Ohtani gives you back a roster spot, but the roster spot’s value is approximately 0. Almost by definition, it will be filled with a replacement level player.

How fast will Ohtani age?

We are witnessing Ohtani’s peak right now. He is in his athletic prime. But his ceiling has been, relative to other greats, modest. By the time Mookie Betts was Ohtani’s age, he had posted hitting-only WARs of 10.5 and 8.2. Albert Pujols had posted 5 consecutive hitting-only WARs above 7. Verlander had posted a pitching-only WAR of 8, with two other seasons above 6.

Ohtani is much more comparable to a Cecil Fielder, Mo Vaughn, or Hideo Nomo. Players who had great moments and individual seasons, but aged unremarkably. Their careers were good, but not great. They were stalwarts, not stars, notable for their longevity.

Ohtani is likely to follow this course. Over the next two seasons, we may season similar MVP-level WARs, split across hitting and pitching. But as he ages, we’re likely to see his WAR crater in double-time as well. As he enters his 30s, Ohtani’s teams’ will be lucky to see a combined WAR above 4

The next two years may be special, but we have likely seen the best of Ohtani. And given his relatively modest peaks as both hitter and pitcher, I would bet on a serious drop off in performance as his skills atrophy.

Caveat emptor to the teams looking to procure the MVP for a long term deal.