NEW YORK — I had a crazy thought Thursday night while watching the Dodgers’ pesky little 1-2 hitters, Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts, obliterate the Mets.
Is it possible, I found myself thinking, that these are the two most talented 1-2 hitters ever to bat back-to-back at the top of any team’s lineup?
It was an excellent night to think these thoughts. The Dodgers had just stampeded the home team for the second straight game, this time by the not-that-close score of 10-2. They led the National League Championship Series, 3-1. They were one win away from their first trip to the World Series in four years. And also …
Their 1-2 hitters had just had themselves One of Those Games.
• They reached base eight times.
• They scored seven times.
• They each hit a stadium-hushing home run.
• And they were in the middle of every rally their team fired up all night.
I even think there’s a case to be made that they had a game so distinct and historic that no two hitters, batting 1-2 in any team’s lineup, have ever duplicated it. I ran that thought past STATS Perform’s Sam Hovland. He looked into it for quite a while. Here’s what he reported back.
Since the RBI became an official stat in 1920, there had never been a team in National League/American League history that had this happen in any game — regular season or postseason:
• Got a home run, at least four runs scored and at least three walks from its leadoff hitter.
• Got at least four more hits and at least four more RBIs from its No. 2 hitter.
That had never happened, in any of those 105 seasons … until the Dodgers’ 1-2 hitters, Shohei and Mookie, did it Thursday in Game 4 of this NLCS.
Whew. I think that gave me an opening to ask about my opening thought.
So after the game, I decided to pose that question to another all-time great — a man who also has the distinction of being an opinionated authority on pretty much every baseball topic I’ve ever run by him, injured Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw.
All right, so he’s not the most impartial opinionated authority walking our planet. But he was the only one who happened to be sitting by his locker, just waiting for me to fire my crazy thoughts at him. So I hit him with my question.
He and the pitcher at the next locker, Walker Buehler, started firing dangerous duos at me. Aaron Judge and Juan Soto. David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez. They both came up almost immediately. I respectfully eliminated them from this competition because they never hit first and second together in a lineup.
“I’m trying to think of teams that I pitched against,” Kershaw said. “Like the best teams. I mean, leadoff-wise, (Jose) Altuve and (Alex) Bregman were good (in Houston). But they cheated, so that’s not really the same.”
Kershaw stroked his chin. He thought some more. Then he did something he almost never does when we have these debates. He conceded my point was pretty frigging good.
“So yeah,” he said. “It’s hard to find. And ours is probably the best (1-2 punch) — right now — for sure.”
We’ll have more from Kershaw shortly. But across the room, I found another injured Dodgers luminary, Freddie Freeman, also hanging at his locker, available to weigh in on this topic.
So I began to recap the evening of “your 1-2 hitters tonight.” He interrupted. Apparently, he didn’t need to hear that recap. He was familiar with their work.
“That’s Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts,” he interjected, helpfully.
“Right,” I replied. “Are they any good?”
“I never heard of them,” Freeman deadpanned.
But in truth, nobody knows more about what Ohtani and Mookie are capable of than he does. When he’s not resting sprained ankles, Freeman mostly hits in the 3-hole behind these two. So he sees this show, from the best on-deck circle in the house, every darned night. He knows what he’s looking at.
“Shohei can work a count, but he can also be super aggressive,” Freeman said. “I mean, you’ve seen him. He can hack with the best of them. Mookie is good at working counts, getting on base. So it’s just so tough for starting pitchers. Right out of the gate, you’re facing two Hall of Famers.”
It’s actually three future Hall of Famers counting Freeman. But that’s a subject for another day. The subject for this day is the Two Greatest 1-2 Hitters Alive … and possibly ever.
So let’s turn this topic over to our October Weird and Wild Department, and look at the show these two guys have put on — in this postseason, in this series, in this game Thursday night.
And let’s begin with a research project proposed by Kershaw himself …
Don’t even think about pitching around Shohei
I think it’s now safe to dismiss what might have been the most hilarious talking point of this postseason: Why can’t Shohei Ohtani hit with nobody on base? He was somehow 0-for-22 in this Octoberfest when he hit with no runners on. But that was before this game. Two pitches into it, that stat was officially defunct, all because of this.
SHOHEI OHTANI LEADOFF TANK
WELCOME TO #NLCS GAME 4 pic.twitter.com/LrUwXWpqMo
— MLB (@MLB) October 18, 2024
After that series-rattling swing, the Mets didn’t just walk Ohtani his next three times up. They threw 12 balls that were closer to the Statue of Liberty than they were to the strike zone. That went well. Immediately following those walks, Mookie Betts went single-double-homer — and the Dodgers got six runs out of it.
The word for that, Kershaw said, would not be “coincidence.” When Ohtani thrashes another one of those 115-mile-per-hour tracers like the one he thrashed Thursday, “he scares pitchers out of the (strike) zone, like we saw tonight,” Kershaw said. “Like, they’re literally scared to throw a strike.”
“You should look this up,” he then suggested, “whenever they pitch around or walk Shohei … to find Mookie’s numbers, because he’s got to be hitting like .800. Mookie takes it personally when they walk Shohei like that. So his numbers have got to be astronomical.”
We asked STATS to check on that. Let’s just say he’s not wrong.
After an Ohtani walk — Since Shohei moved into the leadoff spot in June, he has been walked in front of Betts 26 times, counting the postseason. How about these numbers:
Betts’ average is .435 (10-for-23), with a .500 on-base percentage, 1.000 slugging percentage and 1.500 OPS. Plus three homers, four doubles and an incredible 18 RBIs — in 26 plate appearances. Wow. But just for fun, we expanded this search to look at what happened …
After Shohei reached base in any old way — Counting the postseason, Betts has now come to the plate 77 times with Ohtani on base, via a walk, hit or whatever. Here’s the damage Mookie has done when he merely had Shohei on the bases anywhere, anyhow:
His average is .338 (22-for-65), with a .403 OBP, .662 SLUG and 1.064 OPS. That includes five homers, six doubles and 32 RBIs — and only nine strikeouts in 77 trips to the dish. So when Ohtani is dancing off those bases, Mookie finds another gear.
“I think when Mookie has that edge to him, he really takes it to another level,” Kershaw said. “And then there’s Mookie’s whole skill set too. Mookie is a superstar. I think people forget that sometimes. Mookie is one of the top five or 10 players in the game.
“So we’re very fortunate that they’re both on the Dodgers. And when Mookie gets going like he did tonight, and he can keep that going, and Shohei is controlling the strike zone like that, and then hitting balls in the zone out of the ballpark, then it’s pretty tough to beat us, honestly.”
We could call the Mets to the stand now to corroborate that, but no need! So let’s move on.
More Mookie Madness
Mookie Betts’ two-run shot in the sixth stretched L.A.’s lead to 7-2. (John Jones / Imagn Images)
Just take a deep breath and behold Betts’ Game 4 box-score line:
6 AB, 3 R, 4 H, 4 RBIs, 1 HR
Now let’s remember the context. He’s the No. 2 hitter. You know how many No. 2 hitters in postseason history have had a game like that — with at least four hits, four runs knocked in, three runs scored and a home run trot? Here you go:
Mookie Betts, Game 2, 2024 NLCS (6-6-3-4)
Carlos Beltrán, Game 5, 2004 NLDS (5-5-3-4)
(Source: Baseball Reference/Stathead)
On with the Ohtani Shoh
So now let’s think about Ohtani’s night. A first-swing-of-the-night dagger of a leadoff home run. Three totally intentional “unintentional” walks. And four runs scored.
Here, courtesy of MLB.com’s Jason Catania, are all the hitters who have ever had a leadoff homer, plus at least four runs and three walks in a game — regular season or postseason:
Shohei Ohtani, Game 4, 2024 NLCS
Jake Fraley, for the Reds, on 8/21/2022
But that’s not all. Ready for the rundown of all the players in history who managed to score four runs, on no more than one hit, in a postseason game? Here it comes:
Shohei Ohtani, Game 4, 2024 NLCS
Eddie Murray, Game 3, 1983 ALCS
(Source: Elias Sports Bureau)
The Ace of Base
This man should not be allowed to bat with runners on base. (Brad Penner / Imagn Images)
In the Game 3 edition of this column, we had a good time digging in on the wildest (and also weirdest) Ohtani stat of the last month — his 17-for-20 blitz with runners in scoring position. But today, after Game 4, let’s look at his superhero act in this postseason when runners are anywhere on base. It’s equally historic.
Ohtani started this night hitting an incredible .778 (7-for-9) with men on since the beginning of this postseason. The bad news is, he went 0-for-2 in those situations in Game 4, although he did draw two walks. On the other hand, the good news is … whatever! He’s still crushing it at a level no hitter has ever crushed it with runners on base.
I asked my friends at STATS to look at this, too. It’s unreal.
HIGHEST AVG WITH MEN ON BASE IN A SINGLE POSTSEASON
(minimum 15 plate appearances)
|
.636 |
Shohei Ohtani, 2024 |
7-for-11 |
|
.615 |
Alan Trammell, 1984 |
8-for-13 |
|
.615 |
Willy Aybar, 2008 |
8-for-13 |
|
.611 |
Sean Casey, 2006 |
11-for-18 |
HIGHEST OBP WITH MEN ON BASE IN A SINGLE POSTSEASON
(minimum 15 plate appearances)
|
.733 |
Shohei Ohtani, 2024 |
|
.706 |
Manny Ramirez, 2008 |
|
.696 |
Carlos Beltrán, 2013 |
|
.667 |
Mickey Mantle, 1960 |
|
.667 |
Alan Trammell, 1984 |
(Source: STATS Perform)
So … get the picture? In the history of postseason baseball, nobody has ever hit or gotten on base at this level when there was traffic on the bases. And it’s the guy who leads off for the Dodgers.
“I feel for the opposition,” said his teammate, Miguel Rojas. “You know, I was talking just today to (Mets manager) Carlos Mendoza. … And he was mentioning, like, it’s really hard to start the game when you got a guy like him, taking a swing on the first pitch of the game and doing what he’s been doing the whole year.”
Twenty years ago, our idea of a dangerous 1-2 tag team at the top of a batting order was … what? … maybe Juan Pierre and Luis Castillo, bunting and running up a storm for the 2003 Marlins. Now it’s two monsters who just combined for 73 home runs and 147 extra-base hits for the 2024 Dodgers.
I’ll say this again. We’ve never seen anything like it … unless the Yankees want to start hitting Soto and Judge 1-2!
Party of Four
Max Muncy reached base in 12 straight plate appearances. That’ll work! (Wendell Cruz / Imagn Images)
And now four more of our favorite Weird and Wild tidbits from Game 4.
MAD MAX! Remember when Max Muncy used to be the king of the Three True Outcomes (homers/walks/strikeouts)? Hey, so much for that. He dispensed with one of those outcomes entirely (the whiffs) in this series. Which enabled him to have these 12 plate appearances, back to back to back to … OK, you know the rest.
HR
BB
BB
BB
1B
BB
BB
HR
BB
BB
BB
1B
That’s 12 straight plate appearances in which Muncy reached base, the longest streak within a single postseason in the history of this sport. And it also means he’s just the fifth player ever to reach base at least 12 times in a span of three consecutive postseason games. Here’s everyone who ever did it. You’ve heard of them!
|
13 |
David Ortiz, 2007 |
5-for-6, 7 BB, 1 HBP |
|
12 |
Max Muncy, 2024 |
4-for-4, 8 BB |
|
12 |
Alex Bregman, 2018 |
2-for-6, 8 BB, 2 HBP |
|
12 |
Alex Rodriguez, 2009 |
6-for-9, 6 BB |
|
12 |
Chipper Jones, 1999 |
5-for-11, 6 BB, 1 HBP |
(Source: Baseball Reference/Stathead)
But none of that is even the Weird and Wild part. The Weird and Wild part is that this historic streak was compiled by a man with 20 more strikeouts (64) than hits (44) in his long postseason career. And only once, in his six years worth of visits to Planet October, had he even gone 12 plate appearances in a row without striking out, let alone all the getting-on-base stuff. (That was his last 17 trips of the 2019 postseason — a streak that actually got to 20 if you count his first three trips of the 2020 postseason.) Amazing.
ON THE MARK — What do you know, it turns out that the Mets were also participating in this game, according to my scorecard. And they did have one rock-the-house moment. I hope you got to the park early, because that moment came in the bottom of the first inning, when the still-cooking Mark Vientos answered Ohtani’s leadoff homer with a game-tying home run.
Did you know it’s only the second first-inning home run in Mets postseason history that was hit when they were already trailing? At least the other was memorable! It was David Wright’s first (and only) World Series homer — a two-run shot in the bottom of the first in Game 3 of the 2015 World Series, the first Series game played at Citi Field.
SINGLE HANDED — And hey, here’s another Mets trivia tidbit, because why not. We’ve had fun chronicling all of Francisco Lindor’s big hits in this postseason. But we’re here today to chronicle his little hits.
Would you believe that when he singled in the third inning Thursday, it was the first single he’d hit at Citi Field since Sept. 6? We are not making this up. In between, he fired off two doubles and an unforgettable grand slam against the Phillies. But not a single, um, single. You could look it up.
OHTANI VS. OHTANI — Finally, that Shohei Ohtani leadoff blast means he has now hit eight leadoff home runs this year. Here’s why we’d bring that up again.
Remember that other Ohtani we used to get all excited about — Ohtani the pitcher? Well, those eight leadoff home runs he’s hit happen to be two more — just in three-plus months as the Dodgers’ leadoff hitter — than he gave up, in 86 starts, back in his other life as a pitcher. I know we like to refer to this dude as “human.” But seriously, he’s just way too superhuman at pretty much everything that comes along in the Weird and Wild sport of …
Baseball!
(Top photo: Sarah Stier / Getty Images)
