YES, it's true, sometimes even we don't know what we mean when it comes to these titles. There's some song that "inspired" the first part, you may be able to dredge it up in your head (and then you'll curse us because you can't get rid of it)...and the second part is a rat's nest of ancient calendrical mishegas that is actually best sidestepped by jumping down a rabbit hole.
But it is still June (just barely) and the next "Ides" (according to the chimps who keep typing the Wikipedia entries hoping to randomly churn out Macbeth...) doesn't occur until well after all those upcoming fireworks add even more air pollution over the Canadian fire-infused skies that continue to linger ominously over the Midwest), so perhaps all of this will tip you off to the fact that we're going to talk about Shohei Ohtani-and-oh!-what-a-month-of-June-he's-had...
...just in case you really have fallen down a rabbit hole and have somehow missed the news, blaring continuously since the location in the month where there's supposed to be==G-D it--an Ides...
SO. Showtime...once an inferior cable supplier to HBO Max, before the klunkhead about to spindle, fold and mutilate TCM "streamlined" it to just Max, which helped 100 million people forget all about it...
(Never fear, the data is coming!)
We sorted this mess of numbers (and, really, you need a mess of help to stand alone with these numbers...) by our old standby OPS+, so what you see in the above is a list of 34 players whose months of June (which has so many possible rhymes we'll only mention the most obvious one applicable here--loon...) produced an OPS+ value of 250 or higher. And, of course, the guy at the top of the list is a complete unknown, the guy Bob Dylan claims he was really writing about in "Like A Rolling Stone": the one and only Phil Weintraub. (As you probably suspected, however, we set a low PA threshold in our search to ensure that ol' Phil would show up here, just to confound everyone.)
THE gist of this (and not a moment too soon!) is that Oh-oh-oh-Ohtani ranks 16th on the list of June uber-performing batsmen. We carefully neglected to embolden the data for the players with the highest SLG, but Ohtani's (.915) is not one to sneeze at, residing as it does in the top ten. (That figure may now actually be a smidge higher, as his stats here are only through June 27: last night he went 3-for-5, collecting five total bases, for a 1.000 SLG on the night.)
There is still much hype about Ohtani having the greatest month of June ever, most of it centered around his parallel pitching performance. His almost-unique two-way performance (paging Bob Caruthers) does need to be taken into account, but the fact is that Showtime has been a good bit more erratic on the mound since April (3-3, 3.69 in May and June). His most recent start, however, would seem to indicate that he's getting back on track (10 Ks, 1 ER over 6 IP).
Ohtani clearly loves the month of June: all of his monthly OPS values are between .831 and .893, except for June, which stands out like a pink elephant on foie gras (1.137). June (and all those damn rhymes!) just seems to bust out all over him, with 41 HRs in 442 lifetime plate appearances during the ide-less interval.
ALL of this is to say that we might not expect this level of magnificence to continue, given the pattern that the data seems to reveal. Many thought he would be the one to break the AL record in homers in 2021: as it turned out, he didn't come close.
NONE of this is meant to disparage, demean, or diminish Showtime (though we'd like to speak to him about our exorbitant cable rates...). He is one hell of an entertainment package, and we should savor him, because it really is impossible to know just how long he can keep doing what he's doing. Here's hoping that his service is not interrupted anytime soon.
And if he keeps up this June thang for a few more years, they may have to make an "Ides of June" no matter what the Romans (or the Wikipedia chimps) say...
[UPDATE 6/30: Ohtani has stayed hot since we wrote this, hitting his 14th HR in June last night, giving him a shot at tying Babe Ruth (1930) and Pedro Guerrero (1985) for the most June HRs for those in the elite OPS+ range. He's also moved up to 11th best OPS+ for June (279) and 51st all-time. We're still not sure that he's had the "greatest June ever," but we are sure that June really is Ohtani's month in a way that doesn't seem to be the case for anyone else. ]
