Shohei Ohtani
Japanese professional baseball player
Shohei Ohtani (Japanese: 大谷 翔平, born July 5, 1994) is a Japanese professional baseball designated hitter and pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers of Major League Baseball (MLB). Nicknamed "Shotime", he has previously played in MLB for the Los Angeles Angels and in Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters. Because of his contributions as a hitter and as a pitcher, which make him a rare two-way player, Ohtani's prime seasons have been considered among the greatest in baseball history, with some likening them to the early career of Babe Ruth.
Considered early on as an elite two-way player, Ohtani was the first pick of the Fighters in the 2012 NPB draft. He played for the Fighters from 2013 through 2017 as a pitcher and an outfielder and won the 2016 Japan Series with them. The Fighters posted Ohtani to MLB after the 2017 season, and he signed with the Angels, soon winning the 2018 American League (AL) Rookie of the Year Award. Following an injury-plagued 2019 and 2020, Ohtani hit 46 home runs and struck out 156 batters en route to winning his first AL Most Valuable Player Award (MVP) in 2021. For his statistically unprecedented two-way season, Ohtani received the Commissioner's Historic Achievement Award. In 2022, he became the first player in the modern era to qualify for both the hitting and pitching leaderboards in one season, finishing third in the AL with 219 strikeouts as a pitcher.
Ohtani won his second unanimous AL MVP in 2023, leading the AL with 44 home runs while recording 10 wins as a pitcher.
“Shohei Ohtani” enters the record as japanese professional baseball player. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Shohei, Ohtani and Japanese can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 5, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4391858. VIAF identifies the subject as 315534668. The Library of Congress control number is n2018042957. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1994, 2012, 2013 and 2017.
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This entry incorporates text from “Shohei Ohtani” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.