Can Shohei Ohtani make history and break Barry Bonds' MVP record?

New York Times

16-06-2025

Shohei Ohtani is doing it again. With more than a third of the season in the rearview, the 30-year-old (soon to be 31) is repeating last season's MVP performance, out-muscling his peers in both home runs and OPS. Thirty percent of his hits have been round-trippers, and he's currently on pace to tie last season's total of 54.
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Think of him as Big Blue Origin, offering trips to low Earth orbit exclusively to the baseball community en route to being the runaway favorite (-650) for his fourth MVP award.
The Los Angeles Dodgers announced Sunday they will deploy Ohtani as a pitcher beginning Monday night against the San Diego Padres, which will only widen the gap between the Los Angeles superstar and everyone else in the NL. His odds to win MVP moved from -300 to -650 since it was announced he would start on the mound.
'If he looks decent in even only a few starts, you're going to see his odds become even more expensive to win the award,' Thomas Gable, sportsbook director for the Borgata, told The Athletic.
It's a reminder to everyone that we're sharing the planet with perhaps the most singularly talented baseball player ever, or at the very least, the closest thing to Babe Ruth the modern game will get to see.
Decades from now, Ohtani will be the reference point for old-timers; the 'I-saw-him-once' legend that launches a thousand sports bar stories. He's a merchant of titanic blasts and electric heaters, so gifted in either half of an inning that he spawned his own Paradox of Stone: Could Ohtani throw a pitch so nasty even he could not hit it?
But as anomalous and exceptional as he is to watch in real-time, what will his baseball legacy be? When the next generation of fans hears his name or asks about his game, what will those of us witnessing it now be able to point to apart from a series of YouTube clips?
Baseball is a sport defined by records after all, and Ohtani has shockingly long odds to reach the marquee ones.
He likely won't hit 763 home runs, for example (or 756 if you're still dying on that hill). Debuting at 23, Ohtani's late start was exacerbated by three incomplete seasons out of the gate. He lost a chunk of 2018 and the bookends of 2019 to injury, and roughly 75 percent of 2020 to COVID. Since then, he's averaged 45 homers per year over four full seasons. If he maintained that for the full length of his contract (which would be now through his age 38 season), he'd end up with about 660 homers. If he's still belting 40-plus home runs per year at that age, maybe we could revisit his chances, but even then he'd have another 100 to go.
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Forget becoming the hit king, he'd need 227 per year for this and the next eight seasons to even reach 3,000 (the record is held by Pete Rose at 4,256). RBIs are out, too. Albert Pujols was the last real challenge to Hank Aaron's 2,297 (coming 79 short), and Ohtani could repeat last year's career high (130) nine more times and still be more than 500 short when his current contract ends. (If you're wondering, Freddie Freeman is the closest among active players, and he still has 1,000 to go.)
His mound performance, while dazzling, won't come close to touching the historic counting records, and getting an ERA below 1.12 for a season is like batting .400 on the year: The game is no longer built to allow it.
So what part of baseball's fabric can Ohtani re-stitch in his own image? What part of his career will last forever? How about the MVP award? Or rather, winning more of them than any other player in history. It would not only be a marker of talent and longevity, but would encapsulate, at a glance, his presence as the sport's gravitational center during his career. And he's already (nearly) halfway there.
The current MVP king is Barry Bonds, who is so far ahead of the pack that he won more MVPs in a row than anyone else has won total. Bonds rattled off four MVPs from 2001-04, which pushed his total to seven — more than double the likes of Mickey Mantle, Stan Musial and Mike Schmidt, who each had three. Ohtani is among a quartet of post-millennium players with three, which includes Pujols, Alex Rodriguez and Mike Trout. Unlike the others, Ohtani has a shot at more, and with them, a chance to best Bonds' insane record.
Bonds was able to reach that total because of steroids, and, for some, the chemical enhancement precludes him from being a historical comparison point. But in this case, the number feels fitting for the player Ohtani has been and is capable of being. After all, if his lead holds this year, he will have won more MVPs than every baseball player in history save one.
That's a fitting reflection of his career thus far. Winning more than Bonds wouldn't instantly make him the greatest player ever, but it would mean you'd never have to justify the argument.
He increased his odds with a crosstown move, casting off the shackles of the moribund Los Angeles Angels in favor of the juggernaut Dodgers. The switch also meant he won't compete with Aaron Judge every season during the Yankees' jaw-dropping prime.
After opening at +900 to win the MVP last year, Ohtani cruised to his third win. He opened at +150 this season, and is coasting toward No. 4 even before he throws a pitch.
If he's going to reach eight, he'll have to make hay in the remainder of the decade. Only 11 players have won an MVP at age 35 or older. Two of those were before the divisional era, and four others were when the sport had 26 teams. Bonds is responsible for four (ages 37-40), and Paul Goldschmidt won the other in 2022.
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So, in the modern era (meaning 30 teams), there's been one MVP winner over 35 who didn't have pharmaceutical assistance.
As a pure slugger, Ohtani could probably pull a post-35 win, but would need a clean bill of health for the next four seasons. His advantage is that starting Monday, his body of work isn't limited to the batter's box. Going forward, he won't have to be the league's best hitter to win, as long as his pitching arm suffers no further catastrophes.
Ohtani has shown he can pitch at an elite level (finishing fourth in the 2022 Cy Young race), but his MVP chances take a massive leap by virtue of him pitching at all.
'If he comes into [next] season healthy, he would certainly be the favorite again in the preseason. Hypothetically, he would open around +250 or so, but that actually may be high depending on whether they plan on pitching him all season,' Gable said. 'If he were in the regular rotation from the beginning of the season, it would probably be around even money to start the season.'
Being a critical member of a major league rotation or lineup is insanely difficult; being both is the ultimate trump card when it comes to debating player value. Ohtani wouldn't need to be the league's best hitter or hurler, but simply a prominent member of both groups. That is much more achievable through and beyond age 35, so long as his body holds up. Voters will gravitate toward the novelty of the difficulty as well, and likely jump at the chance to see Bonds' name replaced atop the leaderboard even if they were the same ones who voted it there in the first place.
After all, Bonds was baseball's apex predator. So singular and so much better than everyone else that the sport bent around him to its breaking point. His power over the game was so absolute that he transformed it forever. For better or worse, baseball was different after Bonds was done with it. Winning more MVPs than that guy? That's a legacy. That would tell anyone from any generation all they need to know.
Eight MVPs is doable, though even as Ohtani sits on the cusp of four, it seems nigh impossible. But that's how it should feel when someone in a sport, even the potential GOAT, is trying to touch forever.
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(Photo by Dilip Vishwanat / Getty Images)