The Unstoppable Shohei Ohtani: A 50/50 Milestone and How Huddle Prices the Impossible

It had never been done before. Sure, there have been many spectacular seasons where powerful sluggers hit 50+ home runs. The 50-home run club has added seven new members since 2010 alone - and some of the names may surprise you. Jose Bautista and Chris Davis. Giancarlo Stanton. Aaron Judge (three times). Pete Alonso. Matt Olson. And now, Shohei Ohtani. Similarly, there have been only nine players to steal 50+ bases in a season (since 2010). Four of those seasons have admittedly come in the last two seasons (due to bigger bases, pitch clocks, and emphasis around sprint speed and tracking catcher “pop” times). 

Last season, we saw Ronald Acuna Jr. hit 41 home runs with 73 steals. As it was the first time we’d ever seen a 40/70 season, I think it was fair to assume that we’d never see something like that again.

Yet now, we have the first ever season of 50+ home runs and 50+ stolen bases in a single MLB season. Firsts are genuinely rare in baseball. This feat seemed virtually impossible, especially when you look at a player like Ohtani, who has made a career of being a virtually impossible player. On Thursday, Sept. 19, 2024, Ohtani hit his 49th, 50th and 51st home runs all in the same game against the hapless Miami Marlins. He also stole his 50th and 51st bases, becoming the charter member of the 50/50 (and 51/51) club. By Friday night, he had raised his total to 52/52, begging the question - how high can he get? Could he get to 55/55? Will he go on an unbelievable tear and reach 60/60?

As of September 25, Ohtani has hit 53 home runs with 55 stolen bases. It seems possible, maybe even likely, that he reaches the 55/55 threshold this season.

With Ohtani, nothing seems impossible anymore. A year ago, he hit a league-leading 44 home runs while pitching 130+ innings with a 3.14 ERA and a 167 strikeouts. He was, unsurprisingly, the unanimous MVP. With an elbow surgery ahead of this season, people wondered if he would be the same player without his pitching ability. Now we have an answer - he’s arguably better. He’s setting records every day.

That game where he became the first member of the 50/50 club? He hit three homers and stole two bases. Number of times that’s happened in MLB history in a single game? Once. Ohtani also became the 16th player to record a double-digit RBI game (he had 10). He accumulated more fWAR in that single game than Yankees’ outfield Alex Verdugo has this season (Verdugo has played in 144 games and has 545 at-bats). 

You could make a very legitimate argument that Ohtani’s record-breaking game is the best and most productive game for a batter in MLB history. Three home runs. Two steals. 10 RBIs. 17 total bases. One could make the argument that Ohtani significantly picked up his attempts for base-stealing as it became evident that the record was in reach. It’s sort of like the stat-padding arguments that hounded NBA star Russell Westbrook on his quest to average a triple-double for a full NBA season. Ohtani stole a combined 13 bases across April and May. He only stole 3 in June.

He then ripped 27 stolen bases in July and August, and he’s already stolen nearly 10 in September. 

Huddle's MLB Model and Pricing Shohei Ohtani

How do you possibly price a player like this from a betting perspective? I asked Huddle Trader Matt Ramey, because player props for Ohtani … well, they’re just like everything else? 

And lo-and-behold, they’re just like everything else. Huddle’s trading team essentially takes what the model gives them, makes sure that everything makes sense, and makes it live for bettors to place bets.

The baseball model is admittedly the most complicated model for the American sports that Huddle offers. It takes all of the available data from the previous day, runs it through several “mini models” for hitters and pitchers, and then the outputs from all of those models are compiled into “parameter inputs” for each player.

This all happens automatically, of course, in a very short period of time. From there, the game model takes these inputs, simulates the game 200,000 times, and generates the probabilities to price all of the different markets that Huddle offers. 

The player projection models do an excellent job of separating out the signal from the noise. It can capture real skill improvement or comparative decline in relatively small samples. This is especially true for pitchers (as the model pays particularly close attention to the last 50 pitches that a pitcher has thrown) but it’s also true for hitters.

In many ways, the model is particularly necessary for a statistical anomaly like Shohei Ohtani, as someone who is (when healthy) an elite pitcher and an elite hitter, not to mention an elite baserunner. You typically associate sluggers with people who look like Aaron Judge - enormous human beings with massive pecs who look like they could be NBA small forwards or NFL defensive ends. You typically associate speedsters as long, nimble, gazelle-like athletic specimens who barely touch the ground when they run. An elite pitcher being someone with an incredible release, top-of-the-line vision, and a rubber band-like whip when he throws.

Ohtani is somehow all three of those at the same time. It’s like if Pat Mahomes was not only the best NFL QB, but also a top-10 kicker and a top-10 defensive back too. There’s seemingly nothing Ohtani cannot do. 

And I look forward to the day, perhaps inevitable, when he’s enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame where we can celebrate him as the first man to win a Cy Young, Triple Crown, and World Series MVP in the same season. He’s that good.

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