Talk about being a force of nature! Shohei Ohtani does a lot of things, and he does them well. Perhaps one of his best qualities, though, is his ability to launch a baseball into orbit at any given point. The Los Angeles Dodgers star is one of the best power hitters in the league.
Need proof of that? Well, the MLB has started to track the exit velocities of every ball put into play for quite some time now. In the StatCast era, Ohtani has been the most powerful hitter for the Dodgers so far. It's not even a contest: the fifteen hardest-hit balls for the Dodgers in the StatCast era belong to Ohtani alone.
Against the Pittsburgh Pirates, Ohtani recorded yet another top mark. The Dodgers two-way star reached an exit velocity of 120 miles per hour, a new record for the team in the StatCast era, per MLB Stats.
Ohtani is on pace once again for another historic season. While the Dodgers star's batting average has gone down, he's still the league leader in most batting statistics. He has the highest OPS and the highest SLG out of all players in the National League. His 125 runs also leads the entire MLB.
That's not even mentioning his return to the mound this season. The Dodgers star has been a bit rocky as he returns to pitching. That being said, he's still a solid arm at best, sporting a 4.11 ERA (around league-average) this season. It's nowhere near his performance with the Los Angeles Angels, where he was consistently one of the best-performing pitchers in the league.
Even as an average pitcher, though, Ohtani still brings immense value to the team as a power hitter. The hope is that Ohtani figures it out over the course of the season. He's already incorporating new pitches to his repertoire, including a nasty curveball that was rarely seen from him before.
