Modern two-way baseball player

Hitting a baseball is hard. Pitching is just as hard. The last guy before 2021 to do both at a high level in MLB was Babe Ruth back in 1919. However, Shohei Ohtani batted and pitched well enough in 2021 to win the AL MVP award. Ohtani batted .257 with 46 home runs and 100 RBIs while pitching to a 9-2 record over 130.1 innings with a 3.18 ERA. By the way, he also stoled 26 bases.

Shohei signed with the Los Angeles Angels in 2017 after dominating as a two-way star over in Japan. There were plenty of skeptics over how well Ohtani could do both at the highest level. One scout said, “He’s basically like a high school hitter because he’s never seen a good curveball.”
He won the 2018 AL Rookie of the Year award by hitting .285, 22 home runs, 61 RBIs, and throwing 3.31 ERA over 51.2 innings. However, he had to undergo Tommy John surgery in September of that year. As he recovered from the surgery and other injuries, he could only pitch 1.2 innings over the next two seasons. In the 2020 COVID-shortened season, he batted .190 over 44 games.

Before the 2021 season started, there were doubts about someone hitting and pitching successfully on a full-time basis in the major leagues. Can the human body handle it? How would it be possible to do both when one is already a full-time job? Instead, Shohei Ohtani wound up having the best two-way season in MLB history.