Dodger Talk

Nope. Not too early. 9-1 in post season and swept the Brewers with the best record in Baseball who wiped Dodgers 6-0 in regular season.

jugglerknot !!!!



Shohei Ohtani !!!!







https://www.mlb.com/news/shohei-ohtani-hits-three-home-runs-strikes-out-10-in-nlcs-game-4

 

This deserves the full, TLDNR post, but needs to just for fun.



Ohtani, the Greatest Shoh on Earth, just had the greatest game in baseball history


Shohei Ohtani admires his second home run of the night, which traveled an estimated 469 feet. He was named NLCS MVP after his three-homer, 10-strikeout performance in Game 4. Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images

By Jayson Stark
Oct. 18, 2025Updated 10:03 am PDT
LOS ANGELES — There are stars. There are rock stars. And then there’s whatever supernatural phenomenon that Shohei Ohtani is.

There is history. There is postseason history. And then there’s whatever that was we witnessed Friday evening from the Greatest Shoh on Earth, in a stadium full of people at storied Chavez Ravine who still can’t believe what they’re seeing, no matter how many times they see it.

So what was it they saw? There’s no other way to put this:

A man named Ohtani had the single greatest game any human has ever had on a baseball field … assuming that term, “human,” even describes him.

Let’s rip through the highlight reel. It’s ridiculous.

• The starting pitcher for the Dodgers hit three home runs in one postseason game.

• Those three homers traveled a projected 1,342 feet — and it’s hard to know if that projection is accurate, since one of them left the stadium and might still be hopping along the Hollywood Freeway for all we know.

• Meanwhile, in his alternate life as an unhittable bat-destroyer, Ohtani spun off a 10-strikeout two-hitter over the six-plus innings he got to hang out on the mound.

• And hey, just for the fun of it, he threw two pitches harder than 100 mph.

• Oh, and he did this in the game that reserved the Dodgers’ all-expenses-paid trip to the World Series, where they will try to become MLB’s first repeat champion in a quarter-century.

• And let’s mention this again, because we really can’t remind you enough: He’s one person, doing all this in the same world we reside in.

“So is there any other human who could do what we saw tonight?” I asked the Dodgers’ president of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman, after the electrifying Ohtani led his team to a series-clinching, sweep-cinching 5-1 win over the overmatched Brewers.

“No,” Friedman replied. “He definitely is one of one.”

“Is that now?” I asked. “Or maybe ever?”

“It’s hard to say ever,” Friedman said. “But I’m comfortable saying ‘in my lifetime.’”

For the record, the top of the first inning of Friedman’s lifetime began in 1976. But even if that was 1876, I’m also comfortable saying that wouldn’t change.

“What was that we saw tonight?” I asked Dodgers manager Dave Roberts as he waded through the rising beverage-filled tide of his team’s National League Championship Series victory celebration.

“We’re watching something we’ve never seen before,” Roberts said, still trying to digest the powerful meaning of those words.

Maybe we can help. This is the 150th season of Major League Baseball, so it’s safe to say a lot of stuff has happened over those years. But what the amazing Ohtani did Friday? That has never happened. Never. Ever. Regular season. Postseason. Any league. Any ballpark. Any continent. Any solar system.

My mission was to document the many reasons we can utter a statement that bold. So here come seven reasons this was the single greatest game any human has ever had on a baseball field.

1. Three homers on the October stage

Shohei Ohtani watches his third homer sail out of Dodger Stadium in Game 4.Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images
Don’t even bother asking: Has any team’s starting pitcher ever mashed three home runs in one postseason game? That’s hilarious. Of course no pitcher has ever had a three-homer game in any postseason.

Or even a two-homer game.

Perhaps this would put those three long balls in better perspective: Only two starting pitchers have ever even hit two postseason home runs in their entire careers: Bob Gibson (in 1964 and ’68) and Dave McNally (in 1966 and ’74).

So friends, seeing as how all pitchers not named Ohtani aren’t even allowed near a bat rack anymore, that’s a record that will never be broken.

Unless Ohtani breaks it!



2. Even Babe Ruth never did this
Once upon a time, back in the early days of Ohtani history, you might remember how it was fashionable to call him a modern-day Babe Ruth, or something like that. Well, wasn’t that cute.

The Babe pitched in 166 games in his career, counting the postseason — and only once in all those games did he even hit two homers in a game. That was on June 13, 1921, as a Yankee. You know how many strikeouts he totaled on the mound that day? That would be one.

So the closest I could come to connecting the dots from Babe to Ohtani was this: According to my friends from STATS Perform, only three players have ever hit three home runs in a regular-season game and even thrown a pitch in a postseason game:


Babe Ruth
Jim Tobin*
Shohei Ohtani

*Tobin was the only pitcher in the modern era to homer three times in a game (on May 13, 1942) … until Friday!

3. Three trots and 10 strikeouts in one game
Want me to name-drop a few Dodgers who never had a 10-strikeout postseason game? You know you do. How ’bout Orel Hershiser, Fernando Valenzuela, Hideo Nomo and Don Sutton, plus a zillion more.

But that Ohtani guy just had a 10-strikeout game on a night when he was also hitting three home runs? That’s just preposterous.

How many men have done that in a regular-season game? Yep. Zero.

How many men have even hit two home runs during a 10-strikeout game in the regular season? There have actually been seven. Want to guess the last to do it? Right. Shohei Ohtani (in 2023). Who else?

4. Hit more homers than he allowed hits

Ohtani struck out 10 over six-plus scoreless innings as the Dodgers swept away the Brewers.Ronald Martinez / Getty Images
Here’s another crazy chunk of this box score that makes me chuckle.

Ohtani home runs — 3
Ohtani hits allowed — 2

I asked STATS to look into this one for me, too. Did you know there have been only two regular-season games since 1901 in which a pitcher hit at least two home runs — and finished that game with more homers than hits allowed?

The Rick Wise Game — June 23, 1971, for the Phillies: threw a no-hitter, hit two homers. This used to get mentioned in the Greatest Game Ever conversation all the time. Did Ohtani just end that conversation? I think he did.

The Jess Doyle Game — Actually, no one knows this as the Jess Doyle Game, but maybe we’ll start something. On Sept. 28, 1925, Doyle hit two home runs for the Tigers while giving up only one hit — but it wasn’t very Ohtani-like. He did that in a game in which he got only 11 outs as a reliever and was the losing pitcher.

For what it’s worth, there have also been two pitchers who homered in a postseason game but didn’t allow any hits. But temper your excitement. They got fewer outs combined than Ohtani got by himself: Brandon Woodruff in 2018 (only got six outs) and Travis Wood in 2016 (four outs).

So did any of those games remind you of what Ohtani did Friday? Geez, I hope not.

5. The greatest first inning ever
Who writes these scripts? Here’s how Ohtani’s first inning went on the mound:

Walked the leadoff hitter (Brice Turang) … then casually struck out the next three hitters … Jackson Chourio on a 100.3 mph scorcher, Christian Yelich on a 100.2 mph brushfire, then William Contreras flailing at a sweeper that dropped 29 inches, to go with 17 inches of vertical break.

Dodger Stadium was louder than a launch pad at Cape Canaveral. Then up stepped the Dodgers’ leadoff hitter — the starting pitcher — who did this …



So 446 feet later, this game would never be the same. And neither would the history books.

History lesson No. 1 — How many starting pitchers had ever blasted a leadoff home run before Ohtani pounded that one? Yep, that would be zero. Not in any postseason game. Not in any regular-season game. But, um, not anymore.

History lesson No. 2 — This was the 1,869th game in postseason history — which means there have been more than 16,000 innings. How many pitchers would you guess have struck out three hitters in a row and hit a home run in the same inning of a postseason game? As always, zero would be a savvy guess. (Hat tip: Elias Sports Bureau.)

6. The starting pitcher left the building
On Friday afternoon, I took a stroll out to right field at Dodger Stadium with Mark Langill, the great Dodgers historian. It was supposed to be a stroll through history. Little did we know it would foreshadow what was in store for us later that night.

It was just last week that the Phillies’ Kyle Schwarber pummeled a ballwhere no home run had traveled at this stadium in more than 50 years. It flew over the right-field pavilion, traveling a projected 455 feet, and the Dodgers placed a “455” marker at the back of the pavilion, in the approximate spot where the baseball flew.


A plaque commemorates Kyle Schwarber’s 455-foot homer that was hit during the recent NLDS at Dodger Stadium.Jayson Stark / The Athletic
We then checked out the markers that commemorated the blasts of the only other man who had hit a home run over that pavilion — Pirates legend Willie Stargell, who crushed two of them, one in 1969 (507 feet!) and another in 1973.


Willie Stargell hit a home run an estimated 507 feet at Dodger Stadium in 1969. After Ohtani’s fourth-inning blast in Game 4, the Dodgers will need to install a new plaque.Jayson Stark / The Athletic
And then … something Ohtanic happened. In the fourth inning, those fabled pavilion shots got some company, when Ohtani annihilated his second homer of the night so far over that pavilion that it was hard to tell where it descended to Earth — assuming it did.

“My reaction was just mouth agape,” Friedman said. “Trying to track it. Not seeing it come down. And saying: Did that one just leave the stadium?”

Yessir. It disappeared deep into the night … somewhere. Is it hiking in the San Gabriel Mountains? Is it checking out L.A. Live? Is it touring the Universal Studios lot? Who the heck knows.

We just know that for more than half a century, nobody hit a home run over that right-field pavilion. And then it somehow happened twice in four games, over nine days? And just a couple of days after the Dodgers installed that “455” plaque? Seriously?

As the stadium rocked in disbelief at the sight of that 469-foot space shuttle roaring through the sky, Langill texted me the next item on his to-do list:

“Another plaque.”



7. A career in one night
Finally, here’s one more history lesson. Would you believe that Willie Mays never hit two home runs (or more) in a postseason game? Neither did Henry Aaron, Mark McGwire, Mike Schmidt or Ken Griffey Jr.

Meanwhile, Bob Feller never struck out 10 hitters (or more) in a postseason game. Neither did Juan Marichal, Jack Morris or Christy Mathewson.

But have we mentioned that a superhero named Ohtani just did both on the same night?

That inspired STATS’ Greg Harvey to compile this staggering list of all the players in history who have had a multi-homer game and a double-digit strikeout game in their postseason career:

Shohei Ohtani.

Who just did both of those … in the same game.

“This is just a performance that I’ve just never seen,” Roberts said afterward. “No one’s ever seen something like this. I’m still in awe right now of Shohei.”


Ohtani and the Dodgers celebrate after his historic night helped send them back to the World Series.Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images
Mookie Betts got to watch all three homers from the on-deck circle and all 10 strikeouts from shortstop. So I asked him how he would describe his reaction to what he saw.

“I don’t even know if I have one,” Betts said. “Just watch and enjoy it. That’s really all. I can tell my kids about how I got to play with Ohtani and play a long time with him. But, I mean, there’s just no more words you can really say for what he does.”

It’s true. We are all running out of words to explain what we’re watching as this caped crusader from the mysterious planet Ohtanus rewrites the definition of what is possible.

But are we sure — absolutely, positively sure — that this was the greatest game ever played? Of course we are! To show you why, let’s just review a handful of the postseason contenders.

There was the Reggie Jackson Three-Homer Game (that clinched the 1978 World Series for the Yankees).

There was the David Freese Game (that brought the 2011 Cardinals back from the dead in an epic World Series Game 6).

There were the legendary World Series long balls of Kirk Gibson (1988), Joe Carter (1993), Bill Mazeroski (1960) and even Freddie Freeman (last October).

They were all fit for the story books and the history books. But I’d just like to point out one thing: All those guys forgot to pitch in those games.

And speaking of pitchers, there was Bob Gibson’s fabled 17-strikeout game (in Game 1 of the 1968 World Series).

There was Roy Halladay’s unforgettable no-hitter in the first postseason game of his career (in 2010).

There was Don Larsen’s once-in-a-lifetime perfect game in 1956 — probably the most famous, most romanticized game ever pitched.

But now here I come again to make one small observation: All those guys forgot to hit a single home run on those days.

Really then, how can any legendary game you might want to nominate equal this one? Not to diminish anyone else’s greatest day on a baseball field, but if they didn’t fill up the K column, bash any baseballs out of the stadium (and possibly the solar system) and send their teams to the World Series — all in the same game — they can’t possibly measure up. Can they?

So you know those people who like to fire off opinions that it’s time for Ohtani to give up this pitching side gig of his because it’s not worth it … it’s hurting his hitting … he’d be just as valuable doing only one thing? There might be an answer now for those people. How about this:

Any time that comes up, what do you say we just cue up the video of Game 4 of the 2025 NLCS and remind them of what is possible?

“Yeah,” Friedman said. “That’s right. We can just enter it into exhibit and rest our case.”

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/67...ohtani-world-series-greatest-postseason-game/