Shohei Ohtani is at it again doing the unbelievable.
The Angels’ two-way phenom ranks among the game’s best pitchers, impressing each time he takes the mound with his high strikeout rates and the difficulties he poses for batters in tallying hits. But he’s really been on another level at the plate, leading the majors in OPS, triples and home runs.
Ohtani’s 35 home runs to this point in the season are an impressive feat, and one that has many wondering if he could challenge Aaron Judge’s 2022 American League home run record of 62 longballs. Given Ohtani’s durability (he has played in 94 of the Angels’ first 96 games this season through July 19), it’s not out of the question that he could make a serious push if he continues his torrid pace.
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Sporting News is taking a look at Ohtani’s home run pace to see just how many he could potentially hit in 2023, how he compares to Judge at the same time last season, and whether he has a realistic chance of reaching that 60-home run threshold.
Shohei Ohtani stats 2023
Through July 28, Ohtani has launched 39 home runs, which is already good for the second-most he has hit in a season in his six years in the big leagues. He hit 46 home runs in his 2021 AL MVP-winning season and 34 when he finished runner-up to Judge in the MVP voting last season.
The heat of summer has also seen Ohtani heat up at the plate in terms of power output. Ohtani led the majors with 15 home runs in June after hitting seven in April and eight in May. The 15 tied the American League record for most in the month.
Adding to his power numbers are gaudy strikeout totals on the mound. He fanned 37 batters in June.
The @Angels’ Shohei Ohtani in June:
13 HR (batting)
37 K (pitching)
He’s the first player in MLB history to hit 10+ HR and strike out 35+ batters in a month.
Only one other player has had a 10-HR month and a 35-K month at any point in his career (same month or not): Babe Ruth. pic.twitter.com/HCNudl5dHH
— OptaSTATS (@OptaSTATS) June 28, 2023
There are plenty of reasons to believe that what he has done to this point is sustainable. Per Fangraphs, his HR/FB rate through July 18 was 32.1 percent, nearly 5 points above his career rate of 27.6 percent. He’s hitting fly balls at the second-highest clip of his career at 40.4 percent and he’s barreling the ball up as much as ever, with just his MVP 2021 season (22.3 percent) topping his current rate (19.3 percent).
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Shohei Ohtani home run pace
Based on Ohtani’s simple 162-game pace, he is on track to finish the year with 60 home runs if he plays in the remaining 66 games of the Angels’ season.
But we’re taking a deeper dive into the factors that could play into his home run totals, including park factors and the sport’s random elements.
Sporting News simulated the rest of Ohtani’s 2023 campaign based on him playing the remaining 66 games after July 18 — he has reached at least 157 games played in back-to-back seasons. The model uses data from Ohtani’s entire career, weighted heavily the more recent the data was posted, and takes into account other factors to simulate each game remaining. The model runs the simulation 20,000 times to obtain a large sample size of possible outcomes.
As can be seen by the chart, there is quite a lot of variance. That is because, with 66 games, there is so much that can still happen. On average, and by the median, the model expects Ohtani will reach 52 home runs. In part, the model expects that he will slow down over the course of the season given his past home run paces. But even the most likely outcome, 52 home runs, only has a 10.75 percent chance of happening.
However, that doesn’t mean he should be counted out from being able to reach higher. Several simulations see him reaching as high as 68 home runs in a season if he gets red-hot, though the model only gives him a 0.6 percent chance overall of reaching 63 home runs, and even just a 3.2 percent chance of reaching 60 home runs.
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If we were to only use his 2023 data, the numbers rise considerably higher. In simulations of his 2023 campaign using only data from this year, he would be expected to hit an average and median of 59 home runs and blast a maximum of 76 (which would break the MLB home run record by three). But even in that simulation, he would only have a 22.9 percent chance of reaching 63 to surpass Judge’s total.
But considering he had played in just 94 games in 2023, his 2023 data is a small sample size relative to his overall body of work, which gives us a better picture of what we can expect in terms of his hot and cold stretches.
Shohei Ohtani 2023 vs. Aaron Judge 2022
Ohtani is as good a bet as any player in baseball to reach Judge’s 62 home runs from 2022. But there’s a reason 60-homer seasons are so rare.
At exactly 96 games into the season, Ohtani is a single home run behind Judge’s pace. During Judge’s 96th game last year, he hit two home runs to have a total of 36. Ohtani sits at 35.
That would seem to put Ohtani right on pace with Judge, but it’s also important to bear in mind that Judge got even hotter in the second half and hit 26 home runs over the remainder of the season. That was an increased rate of 0.38 home runs per game to 0.39 home runs per game.
We took a look at Ohtani’s pace through July 18 compared to Judge’s 2022 pace. We also added in a line to show the pace a player would need to maintain roughly throughout the season to reach at least 60 home runs.
Ohtani and Judge are neck-and-neck 96 games into the season, however, while Ohtani has about caught up with the 60-home run pace (he’s one home run behind it at this point), Judge vastly exceeded the pace for stretches in order to get to 62.
Judge’s 2022 pace shows how Ohtani might experience some challenges in keeping up with the 60-plus-home-run pace. Judge had already been hitting an impressive amount of home runs midway through last season. But he got even hotter in the second half of the year, blasting 26 home runs over his final 66 games.
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