NO, we're not suggesting that anything sinister will be happening to Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers' $700 million man. We are just looking at his monthly numbers and getting the impression that his hottest months might well be behind him. Take a look at the following data breakout and see what you think:
FIRST, the yearly log for Ohtani in June since his arrival in MLB (recall that he missed the month of June in 2018, his rookie year). We were discussing 10+ homer months a bit earlier (before we got swamped with work on another project)--as it turns out, Ohtani has had three such months in his career--and you're looking at all of them in the June data. June of '23 was truly a monster month for him, but June of '21 was not far behind. This June just past wasn't too shabby, but note that his OPS for the month was actually lower than his collective lifetime OPS for June...
SECOND, the monthly summaries, showing just how elevated his June performance is relative to all the other months. The June totals really do look Ruthian in nature: when we prorate out to 162 games--which should be close to his actual June games played number this time next year--his HR total projects to 66. That's actually a bit more than Ruthian...
BUT now for the more sobering part. Though he's had two solid months of July in recent years ('21 and "23, both with OPS values above 1.000), overall it's been an off-month for him, as shown in the averaged numbers for each month (the data at the bottom of the graphic).
All of Ohtani's numbers for July, August and September are still quite solid--they're just not superhuman the way those June numbers are. At the very bottom of the data set we show you the averaged sum of his his numbers for the de facto second half of the season--and you can see that in the past he's lost 80 points of SLG on average in those months as compared to his first half performance.
NOW, as we all know as we watch the Federalist Society fraudeurs continue their goose-stepping antics, anything can happen, even the unthinkable. So it's certainly possible that Ohtani will buck the trends on display here. That said, a clear pattern has emerged showing that Shohei tends to wear down as the season plays out. We figure 15-18 homers from here to the end of the '24 season and a .270 BA, with an OPS under .900.
STILL quite good, of course--but, as we said at the top, mortal.
We'll circle back on this at season's end to see how it turns out--stay tuned...
