Shohei Ohtani keeps rewriting baseball history, and the latest chapter arrived at Dodger Stadium against the San Francisco Giants. The Los Angeles Dodgers two-way star has stacked MVPs, a Rookie of the Year, World Series rings and jaw-dropping seasons at the plate and on the mound, and his recent dominant start has the Cy Young conversation heating up in Los Angeles and across the National League.
Ohtani’s list of honors reads like a Hall of Fame index: Rookie of the Year in 2018, five straight All-Star nods, four Silver Sluggers and six consecutive All-MLB first team selections. He added back-to-back World Series trophies after joining the Dodgers ahead of the 2024 campaign. He’s also a four-time MVP, tying Barry Bonds with that total and marking unprecedented crossover success between leagues.
On offense, Ohtani produced one of the most insane seasons in recent memory in 2024 by becoming the first player to eclipse both 50 homers and 50 steals in the same year. He finished that year with 54 homers and 59 steals while hitting .310 with a .390 on-base percentage and a .646 slugging mark, translating to 79 runs of extra production above an average player according to FanGraphs. Then he topped himself in 2025, hitting 55 homers and setting a new career high at the plate.
But Ohtani isn’t just a slugger who occasionally pitches; he returned to the mound in 2025 with bona fide results, recording a 2.87 ERA, a 1.90 FIP and 62 strikeouts in 47 innings, adding 1.9 wins above replacement on the season. That kind of two-way impact is historically unique and is what fuels talk of him chasing a Cy Young in addition to MVP hardware. If he pulls off a pitching award while remaining an elite hitter, he would rewrite what we think is even possible for a single player.
In the most recent outing against the Giants, Ohtani looked every bit like a pitcher on a mission, throwing seven scoreless innings while yielding just four hits and two walks and fanning eight batters. That performance lowered his ERA through mid-May to an eye-popping 0.82, a figure that reads more like a video game stat than reality. It’s early in the season with much baseball still to play, but nights like that make a strong case that he’s on a Cy Young pace.
The National League features several other terrific arms, so the path won’t be simple; Paul Skenes, Christopher Sanchez and Jacob Misiorowski have all shown outstanding form to start the year. Skenes, the defending Cy Young winner, still carries elite numbers and Misiorowski’s strikeout rate has been otherworldly when healthy. Yet Ohtani’s dual threat — elite pitching and elite hitting — gives him a different kind of value that voters and analysts will have to reckon with.
His manager, Dave Roberts, spoke plainly after the win, saying, “Like I’ve said for a long time, he’s a different person when he’s pitching,” and adding, “I think he wants to win the Cy Young. I think that that helps the Dodgers, too, in 2026. When he’s pitching, I just sort of let him go and…he’s in a zone.” Those words underline how teammates and staff view his mindset on the mound versus at the plate.
Santiago Espinal, who delivered a go-ahead homer in that same game, captured the feeling in the clubhouse with an equally exact quote: “When he’s pitching, everybody expects a Cy Young. When he’s hitting, everybody expects an MVP and all that stuff. That’s what he showed tonight. It’s just Cy Young-caliber.” That expectation stack is unusual, and it colors every start and every at-bat he has.
Looking ahead, the long season will separate flash from consistency, and the track record suggests Ohtani can sustain excellence. He’s already accomplished virtually everything short of a Cy Young, and if he stays healthy and keeps delivering starts like the one at Dodger Stadium, the award conversation will keep building. Whatever happens next, watching Ohtani chase yet another historic milestone feels like witnessing a new chapter of baseball history being written in real time.
