Shohei Ohtani creates MLB's 50-50 club: How baseball's best player became an elite base stealer

With just over a week remaining in the Major League Baseball regular season, it's safe to declare Shohei Ohtani's first season with the Los Angeles Dodgers a huge success. He positioned himself to win his third career MVP award; he's advanced to return to the mound next spring; oh, and he's set a new historical benchmark Ohtani became the first player in recorded history to have at least 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in the same MLB season. Ohtani recorded his 50th and 51st stolen bases against the Miami Marlins on Thursday afternoon, then capped his day by hitting his 49th and 50th home runs.

Ohtani, 30, had already dazzled with his bat and arm. But this season, baseball's most accomplished player has added another description to his collection: base stealer extraordinaire. While it's not common for any star to become a master base stealer after turning 30, Players tend to decline in that area at this point in their careers.And anecdotally, teams tend to red-light their best players to preserve their health: There's not much that's common about Ohtani's career.

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts, who is no stranger to the art of stealing bases, attributed Ohtani's newfound ability to the quiet behind-the-scenes work he's done with trainer Clayton McCullough on his technique and approach. “I think he looks like a base stealer now.” Roberts told the San Gabriel Valley Tribune last month“His jumps are much better, the situations he finds himself in make more sense on the scoreboard, and he's become an excellent base stealer and not just a fast baseball player.”

The results indicate Ohtani’s hard work is paying off. Not only has he been more aggressive on the bases, but he’s also been much more efficient. He entered Monday’s game with potential career bests in several categories, including total stolen bases, efficiency and rate of attempts per opportunity. (Note that base-stealing opportunities are defined as times he was on first or second base with the next base open.)

That would be impressive if anyone could do it, and even more so if it were an elite hitter who has already increased his physical toll by continuing to rehab his arm. So, with Ohtani on the cusp of another historic achievement, we thought it would be an opportune time to take a closer look at his base-stealing exploits. Let's get to it.

1. How fast is Ohtani?

Again, Ohtani’s otherworldly hitting and pitching performances over the years have made it easy to overlook his sheer athleticism. At his peak, it was fair to describe him as one of the league’s fastest runners — he ranked in the 90th percentile or higher in sprint speed in 2021, according to Statcast. Ohtani has since lost a step, as players often do as they age, but he continues to rank in the 73rd percentile.

Ohtani also grades out well by more traditional measures of speed.

For those who don't know, scouts have long used stopwatches to measure the distance players travel from home plate to first base as a way to contextualize their explosiveness and raw speed. Left-handed hitters, like Ohtani, have an advantage because they are naturally closer to first base. Still, his 4.16 home-to-first-base average is tied for 17th among qualified MLB players. –That's even faster than Elly De La Cruz.

To answer the question in the header: Ohtani is still plenty fast.

2. Is Ohtani choosing his positions well?

There are several ways to analyze a player's ability to steal bases. The most basic is to look at his results; the most sophisticated is to analyze his technique. We could sit here and analyze Ohtani's forward plays and jumps, but we think the most effective way to showcase his newfound skills is to take a hybrid approach.

Anyone reading this has seen enough baseball in their life to know that there are levels to a stolen base. A success is a success, but you can intuit that a success is a big success when that attempt doesn't result in a pitch or a bunt attempt. With that in mind, we analyzed and watched each of Ohtani's stolen bases and recorded how often the play ended with no pitch (the ultimate success) or no bunt.

Basically, this is our rough way of evaluating how well Ohtani is picking his spots — that is, whether he's playing the right pitches or the right pitchers at the right times.

Here's what we found, in bullet format:

• Stolen Bases:51
• Stolen bases without attempted bunt: 14
• Stolen Bases with No Throw Attempt: 17

To be clear: We counted a steal as a “foul throw” or “foul tag” if the ball was on the ground and the catcher had to give up the play; or if the ball slipped out of the catcher’s hands; or if the catcher made an errant throw that gave the infielder no chance. If you disagree with that methodology, fair enough; we think those kinds of errors are usually a function of a runner knowing what he’s doing — either picking his spots or getting a good lead or jumping out and creating havoc.

Whatever your philosophy, let's not get bogged down in the details. Without a statistical foundation, we can't say for sure how good Ohtani is at picking his spots. But then again, we've all watched enough baseball to know that a baserunner who hasn't thrown or attempted to bunt the ball in 31 of his 51 steals looks like a pretty solid job.

3. How much has Ohtani benefited from the new rules?

It should be noted that base stealing in 2024 is different than it was in 2018. Lest anyone forget, MLB installed new participation rules ahead of the 2023 season, limiting pitchers to a pair of safe steps or overhand pitches during any at-bat; they can pitch overhand a third time, but have to throw out the runner or sacrifice the base.

MLB The hope was that those changes would revive the ground game. Have: Clubs are averaging more than 0.72 stolen bases per team game since the start of the 2023 seasonThis year's robbery rate is the highest since 1992.

Assessing how much a given player has benefited from the new rules is difficult for obvious reasons: we can't say for sure what would have happened under the previous guidelines. Still, we wanted to provide some insight into the matter.

As such, we reviewed all 73 pickoff attempts made against Ohtani this season and kept track of a few data points along the way: how often he was caught leaning; how often he was hit with multiple pitches; and how often he stole a base after the pitcher had exhausted his free throws.

Here is the data provided in a very useful table:

There's no denying that the new rules have shaped the way pitchers approach base-stealing situations. We're sure Ohtani has benefited from that effect. We're much less sure that it has helped Ohtani more than any other player.

There's simply no evidence that Ohtani's stolen base total is being inflated relative to the average player by the rules and the rules alone; he's not drawing a couple of swings and then taking advantage of a defenseless pitcher all that often.

4. What does it take to catch Ohtani stealing?

Forgive us in advance for sounding like crazy business consultants proposing a new red-and-blue team management exercise, but sometimes the best way to examine a situation is to look at it in reverse. Or, when it comes to evaluating baseball players, look at their flaws and figure out what they have in common.

Frankly, there's not much to learn from Ohtani's failures on the bases, which is to be expected given the small sample size available.

We did notice one thing, however, on the four occasions when Ohtani was actually “caught stealing” (the other instance was labeled just a pickoff): On two of those three plays, the catchers' throws brought the catcher in front of the base and down the first base line, positioning them to hit Ohtani as he slid rather than tag him as he came up.

Is there a lesson to be learned from this? Only that these days, when it comes to Ohtani's base-stealing exploits, it's better to be lucky than good.