Ohtani Keeps Making History

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On Thursday night Shohei Ohtani had an historic performance on the mound and at the plate by pitching a shutout and hitting two home runs on the same day.

My friend Al Zevin, who is an amateur baseball historian, did some research and discovered that the remarkable feat occurred only four other times in modern baseball history.

2023 Shohei Ohtani vs. Detroit

1971 Sonny Siebert vs. Boston

1971 Rick Wise vs. Cincinnati

1962 Pedro Ramos vs. Baltimore

1961 Milt Pappas vs. Minnesota

As a big Ohtani fan, I then boastfully claimed to Al that Ohtani has probably hit more home runs this year than those four pitchers combined for their entire careers.

I did some research and well…I was wrong.

Here’s what I found. All four pitchers, Siebert, Wise, Ramos and Pappas are what we might have called good hitting pitchers in that they did hit an occasional home run. So, it was not merely a fluke that they hit two home runs in a game that they pitched a shutout. As a matter of fact, both Sonny Siebert and Rick Wise each hit 6 home runs in the 1971 season. Here’s how the career home runs stack up for these four pitchers.

Sonny Siebert: 12 years, 18 home runs

Rick Wise: 18 years, 15 home runs

Pedro Ramos: 15 years, 15 home runs

Milt Pappas: 17 years, 20 home runs

So, their total career home runs of 68 are more than twice that of Ohtani’s current number 38.

This of course is a very arbitrary comparison but insightful none the less. (And aren’t these statistical comparison’s fun and part of the charm of baseball)? What we see here is that pitchers really could hit back when they were allowed to. The four mentioned here could all be described as having occasional power though their lifetime batting averages were dreadful. Wise .195, Siebert .173, Ramos .155, and Pappas .123. But yes, they had occasional power and averaged about 5 home runs per season. They all had solid career pitching stats with only Ramos clocking in with a below .500 won-loss record and plus 4.00 ERA. They may even have had more hitting success if there was a DH back when they pitched, though Rick Wise pitched half his career in the DH era.

One other note: these four pitchers also accomplished the two-home run-shutout feat in the same game. Ohtani needed a double-header, pitching the shutout in the first game and blasting two homers in the second.

None of this though can in any way diminish from Ohtani’s incredible accomplishments. Right now, he leads both leagues in home runs, he’s second in RBI’s, third in strikeouts and two off the pace in wins. He is having a truly remarkable season and should continue making history.

References: Al Zevin, Jeff Robinson, ESPN, Baseball-reference.com

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Published by Steven A. Falco

I have been a writer all my life and recently started blogging. I have published two books. My latest book is a coming-of-age novel entitled Mickey Mantle's Last Home Run which follows the exploits of a fifteen-year-old playing baseball back in 1968. It is a book about the friendship of a black kid and a white kid trying to navigate teenage life in that tumultuous time when our country seemed to be coming apart. My first book, Grandpa Gordy’s Greatest World Series Games, is geared to middle-grade readers. In it, Grandpa Gordy, a retired sportswriter, relates his versions of the great games of our national pastime in a hilarious and entertaining fashion. My love of baseball shows through in my books as I try to convey many of life’s lessons in an enjoyable lighthearted way. I grew up writing and playing baseball in the New Jersey suburbs of New York City. I majored in English at Montclair State University where I studied Steinbeck, Dylan, and Berra.

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