The periodic table ends at 118. Shohei Ohtani exists somewhere past that, somewhere in a parallel universe, and so does the man who could have been his shadow self. Oganesson is the last element — element 118 — not because the universe ran out of matter, but because physicists haven’t yet confirmed what comes next. Theoretical chemists believe elements 119 and 120 exist. They believe these atoms would be enormous and volatile, unlike anything observed. They would behave according to rules not known, defy classification, and exist only briefly before collapsing under their own weight.
They have a name for that space beyond the known table: the island of stability. The idea is that somewhere past the edge of what we can measure, there are elements that hold together without immediate decay. They persist long enough to be studied and marveled at. Shohei Ohtani lives on that island; he is Element 120.
The word people reach for is “unicorn.” The problem with that word is that unicorns are invented, creatures of mythology, conjured because the world lacked the vocabulary for something we couldn’t explain. Ohtani is not invented. He is standing in a batter’s box right now. He is warming up in a bullpen right now. The language failed to convey; the man arrived anyway.
To reckon fully with what he is, I believe you have to split him. We have to imagine a universe in which the baseball gods, faced with the absurd unfairness of concentrating this much ability in one body, instead spread the inventory across two men. A hitter separate from the pitcher. Same upbringing, both were raised in the tradition of disciplined, technical baseball. One destined for Cooperstown from the left side of the roster; the other from the right. That thought is what this piece is about — and about one of those two men in particular, the one who never existed, the one who could have been Shohei.
His name, in this parallel universe of mine, is Ohohei Shtani. And he is nothing like the man whose name nearly rhymes with his.
Imagine him arriving in Chicago in 2018, twenty-three years old, Hokkaido pedigree, NL Rookie of the Year before August. The Cubs are in their post-championship hangover, and the North Side needs something to light a spark. Shtani gives them something to fear instead. He bows at the beginning of the game, only to the baseball. He does not tip his cap after home runs. He watches the ball the way a man watches something he already knew would happen, not with surprise or joy, but with a flat recognition. When he runs, there is no theatre. No performance. When he hits, it’s just damage, and the quiet assumption of more damage to come.
The press box called him cold. The opposing dugouts called him something else — something that doesn’t translate cleanly, a mixture of dread and involuntary respect. His teammates know a different version. They know about the notebooks- dozens of them, filled with observations about every pitcher he has ever faced, every mechanical flaw he has ever noticed, every sequence that he’s evaluated. They know he arrives at the ballpark before anyone else and leaves after everyone else. And in between, he conducts his preparation with unrivaled focus. There is a free spirit in there, but you have to know where to look. In the offseason, Shtani paints. Not baseball scenes — abstract work, large canvases, color laid on with a palette knife in thick aggressive strokes. He has shown twice in a small gallery in Sapporo; neither show was announced in advance, nor covered by the press until after the show happened. Even off the field, he was hard to pin down.
I've faced a lot of guys who wanted to beat you. He's the only one I've ever faced who looked like he needed to; it was personal every single time. I don't know what we did to him, but I'm sorry." — former NL infielder
He’s reminiscent of another ballplayer, Albert Belle. Only in the ways that mattered, though. The menace. The relentlessness. The sense that opposing pitchers were not facing an athlete so much as a force of nature. Belle’s fury was volcanic, barely contained, always threatening to explode. Shtani’s is different and cold; controlled and architectural. A teammate once remembered walking into his hotel room on a road trip and finding him standing in the middle of the room, His bat resting on a shoulder, eyes fixed on nothing, tracking imaginary pitches through the dark. He’d be completely unreachable, three hours before a game, that he’d go 3-for-4 in. “He was somewhere else, man” the teammate said. “And then he destroyed everyone.” By the time he had walked into the ballpark, the game had already started somewhere in his head. It wasn’t fair.
What Shtani does with the bat — across nineteen MLB seasons, from Wrigley Field to Chavez Ravine — is the career of a man who decided early on that there is only one way. His career was precision expertly applied at scale.
The Roberto Clemente Award comes in 2035, quietly, without fanfare, for work nobody in the press had been covering because Shtani never invited them to cover it. He has been funding a youth baseball program in Aomori Prefecture for eleven years by then. Forty kids a year, equipment covered, travel covered, coaching covered. He has never spoken publicly about it. He accepts the Clemente Award at the ceremony, nods once at the crowd, and says four words into the microphone: “Baseball should be free.” And leaves the plaque behind when he returns to his seat.
"There was a game, I won't say when, where we got him out three times. Three times. We were feeling pretty good about ourselves going into the ninth. He hit a ball that I still think about when I'm trying to sleep. We don't talk about that game. Nobody on that team talks about that game." — Former NL outfielder
Four-time NL MVP award winner. Three Hank Aaron Awards. Multiple World Series rings, including a World Series MVP. The greatest Cub since Ernie Banks, a descriptor that does not come cheaply on the North Side, and one of the most feared sluggers in Dodgers history. Of course, this all leads to the inevitable first-ballot Hall of Fame selection, by unanimous decision in 2042. Though by then Cooperstown felt less like an achievement than an administrative update.
Now, the Pitcher — and Yes, We Know
We are aware of this. You just spent several hundred words inside the mind of a cold, paint-smeared destroyer of baseballs who funds youth baseball in secret and accepts his Roberto Clemente Award with four words. The transition to a pitcher’s ERA and WHIP is going to feel like leaving a rave at 3 a.m. and stepping into a library. We acknowledge this. Shtani was, frankly, more fun to write and talk about.
Here is the thing about Shohei, the pitcher: he does not need your full attention. He is fine with being the second-most-discussed half of his own career. We’ve been watching him carve through lineups for several years now, and we’ve liked what we’ve seen. In this alternate universe, I chose to let Shohei be the person we’ve seen up to this point in real life. Let’s dive into the numbers for Shohei Ohtani- A.K.A The Verdict — because when he throws the sweeper, it’s already been decided.
“Japan has produced great pitchers, but he was not great in the way the others were great. He was something that required a completely different word. We have been searching for that word. I don’t think our language has it yet.” — Sadaharu Oh
He was not cold the way Shtani was cold; his silence felt dangerous and uneasy. Shohei felt calm and peaceful, even. He bowed to bullpen catchers after sessions. Thanked the clubhouse attendants by name. Moved through the ballpark with the same quiet rhythm every day, as if routine had become philosophy. He approached pitching the way a swordsmith approaches his steel. Pitchers described facing him in batting practice as unsettling because of how little seemed accidental, nothing rushed or forced. Every movement looked repeatable enough to survive inside a laboratory environment. One teammate joked that he did not actually “warm up” — he calibrated.
In this pitcher-only universe, the one where Shohei spent his career in pinstripes before an iconic farewell tour in Seattle, he becomes the only answer to the question of who the greatest Japanese pitcher in baseball history was. Not a close call or a conversation. He goes 236 and 106. His WHIP is 1.05. His ERA+ is 157. That’s 57% better than the league average. He won the Cy Young Award four times, and he was a three-time World Series Champion, including taking the WS MVP honors in 2028. He strikes out more batters than any Japanese-born pitcher who ever threw a ball, by a margin that is not close; 3,594 victims. Monument Park in New York has his number and his likeness. He was inducted into Cooperstown in 2045, on the first ballot, unanimously.
“I understand what he’s doing on the mound because I lived inside that too. The difference is, I had four years where everything came together. He had twenty. That’s not a career. That’s an argument that the position was invented for him.” — Sandy Koufax
What makes the pitching career interesting, beyond the hardware, is the surgery. Tommy John does not end careers the way it once did, but it steals time. It steals a season, sometimes more, and it might steal the version of you that existed before the problem. Ohtani came back from it and was better. Not just functional. Not grinding with a lesser arsenal. Better — sharper command, an evolved sweeper, a fastball that retained enough to keep hitters honest. The adjustment he made was surgical in its own right. He diagnosed what the new arm could do and built a new pitcher around it rather than mourning the old one.
Let’s get back to the real Shohei Ohtani, the one pitching on Planet Earth in our current universe. The Cy Young has not yet had his name on it. That is the only item remaining on the checklist, and Shohei Ohtani does not leave things on checklists.
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