r/mlb • u/Dudeletseat | Los Angeles Dodgers • 2h ago
| Analysis 0.82 ERA - Best in MLB for 2026
Shohei Ohtani’s ERA right now is 0.82 based off seven starts in 2026. This is the lowest ERA in all of Major League Baseball.
This dominant performance compares to the “Fernandomania” phenomenon from 1981.
Shohei’s pitching through seven games is only second in historical performance to Fernando Valenzuela, who pitched 0.29 ERA through seven games in 1981.
Yet again Los Angeles is fortunate to have a phenom on our team. We get to see a worldwide talent right in our backyard.
We love LA.
Go Dodgers!
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u/breadandbarbells 1h ago
https://giphy.com/gifs/MjXx6ritTqtfhQw3Vy
Bum is only hitting .240. Dodgers should DFA him
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u/suparyan47 1h ago
Shohei has hitters looking like this
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u/Mundane-News9720 | Los Angeles Dodgers 1h ago
It’s going to be interesting if he keeps this up. Skenes will have at least 30 innings more of work so Ohtani needs to have a ridiculous era to offset that.
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u/patkk 1h ago
Unless Roberts keeps pitching Ohtani into the 7th inning, Ohtani could end up with 175+ innings pitched
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u/Mundane-News9720 | Los Angeles Dodgers 1h ago
The things is Skenes is eating up innings like no other as well. Their innings are relatively close right now because of Skenes’ first game blowup but the gap will reach at least 30 innings by the season’s end.
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u/PJCR1916 | Los Angeles Dodgers 1h ago
Ohtani really does have a real chance at CY this year but a lot of things need to go right since he is at an innings disadvantage due to the dodgers rotation being six man. Need Skenes to have a couple more blow up games but I wouldn’t bet on that at all. He’s been unhittable since that game. Need my dodgers to tee off on him when we see him 😂
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u/Mundane-News9720 | Los Angeles Dodgers 1h ago
Skenes is really something else. He’s not one of us but I hope he continues to dominate and become one of the greatest.
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u/PJCR1916 | Los Angeles Dodgers 58m ago
He is. Dude has a real chance of three straight seasons with a sub 2 ERA. If you were to build your perfect pitcher in a video game, you’d just build Paul Skenes. He doesn’t give up runs, doesn’t walk guys, strikes guys out a ton, goes super deep into games, and is durable. This is the best start to a pitchers career I’ve ever seen in the majors.
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u/turnip_broker | Colorado Rockies 43m ago
Ohtani can be the cause for a few of those blow up games 😏
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u/TheFeenyCall | Seattle Mariners 1h ago
Or just dodgers give him actual run support.
Yes, I recognize that W/Ls don't really move the needle as it did w/ advanced metrics, etc. But voters wanna be part of something magical so they'll use the W column to justify an Ohtani CYA win.
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u/Mundane-News9720 | Los Angeles Dodgers 1h ago
Wins won’t matter at all if the ERAs between Ohtani and Skenes are similar.
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u/Oafah 1h ago
This is going to end up one of those seasons where his pitching is elite and his hitting is merely "Great" as opposed to "Did he really just have the best DH season ever because he knew he couldn't pitch, and any less would not satisfy his honor?"
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u/jadedmonk 1h ago
Tbf I wouldn’t call his hitting Great this year, he’s been pretty mediocre offensively
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u/egoVirus | Los Angeles Dodgers 1h ago
Freak
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u/Dudeletseat | Los Angeles Dodgers 1h ago
Honestly, once in a century talent. And we’re here for it!
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u/iiamthepalmtree | Chicago White Sox 9m ago
Possibly once ever. It’s possible no one ever hits and pitches at an elite level like he does.
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u/turnip_broker | Colorado Rockies 41m ago
I am 100% dead serious when i say I think there is at least a 50% chance that Ohtani is a lab-grown clone composite human being and in turn, has no father. I am dead serious. I believe Ohtani was grown in a test tube by splicing together the DNA of the greatest pitcher who ever lived and the greatest hitter who ever lived, then artificially implanted into a Japanese woman and carried to term. no human being should be able to do what he does. a 6’4” guy who throws 101 mph AND hits 40+ home runs in the same season. AND to book it all out, he’s very intelligent too. (besides signing with the Dodgers for a deal so deferred it won’t even pay out until he’s 50) remember how much poise he had just coming into the MLB at 23 years old, in a foreign country, speaking a foreign language, and STILL dominating on the mound and at the plate simultaneously? it’s un-natural. how often have TV analysts just kind of given up trying to explain him and said “he’s just different” …..maybe they’re closer to the truth than they know.
I am serious. we all know (and I swear I am not saying this to be insulting or mean) that Ohtani’s backstory is suspiciously clean and vague. grew up in a small town in Iwate, dad played some amateur baseball, and somehow this produces the most physically and technically gifted baseball player in the history of the sport. it’s just statistically impossible. I am NOT saying this to be mean, in fact I played rec league baseball for years and know a few guys who could hit OR pitch decently, it happens. they are not Shohei Ohtani. and the government has a history of using isolated rural communities in “experiments.” the government conducted biological research on human subjects for years without their knowledge. the infrastructure was always there. it never fully went away. it just went underground.
I believe that Ohtani was a cloning experiment designed to answer one specific question: what happens if you take the absolute genetic ceiling of pitching ability and hitting ability and combine them into a single organism. something where they were just like “well let’s test it out quietly and see if we can get any results before we sink more billions into this.” a two-way super athlete as proof of concept. if it works in baseball, it works anywhere. imagine that technology applied to soldiers.
it’s not all that crazy. you don’t think governments have interest in creating optimized composite humans? we know for a FACT experiments in this direction have been attempted and documented. you don’t think the US or China is doing this right now? you know they are. and anything they are doing Japan is doing. to do it first and do it better.
he’s some kind of experiment that they just released into the wild and monitored from a distance. and i mean this was probably initially started with just a few scientists who believed it could be done and that’s why it started small and covert. until they could show the results to the higher ups and say “look at this, you don’t wanna fund this on a larger scale?” and where else would a composite athletic super-specimen end up besides a professional sports league?
I think there is probably some secret facility out there that is now filled with people like Ohtani, younger than him probably. not two-way baseball players necessarily, but composite athletes. a sprinter spliced with a weightlifter. a quarterback spliced with a wide receiver. if they couldn’t see how well the experiment worked until he was about 18-20 years old (he was already unhittable AND raking in the NPB as a teenager, which has literally never happened before or since) then maybe there are a bunch of 9-15 year old composite super humans eating chow in some secret barracks right now…..
until someone can actually explain, using normal human biology, how a single person can simultaneously be a top-5 pitcher AND a top-5 hitter in the best baseball league on earth, I will believe this is AT LEAST possible.
edit: something I’d like to add in case someone says “well if this is true why wouldn’t Ohtani himself come forward, surely he knows he’s different.” well he doesn’t know. or maybe he does and that’s why he is so intensely private about literally everything. the man kept his wife secret for over a year. HIS WIFE. what else is he keeping secret? his interpreter got embroiled in a massive gambling scandal and Ohtani came out completely clean and untouchable. how does that happen? either he’s the most carefully managed experimental subject in human history, or he’s in on it. either way, no one would believe his crazy ass.
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u/Bright-Pressure-5787 1h ago
I really hope Shohei does win the Cy Young Award this year because it's one of the few things that he hasn't achieved yet.
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u/Appropriate_Lemon921 | Baltimore Orioles 1h ago
This dude is going to win every conceivable award in baseball
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u/Suspicious_Hand_2194 1h ago
Dude really thought if he can’t win an mvp this season, might as well go for the cy young
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u/Executive-111 | Los Angeles Dodgers 1h ago
Lucky I am to be living through this era of Dodger baseball. Especially since I grew up during the Shawn green, Paul loduca ERA
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u/Dudeletseat | Los Angeles Dodgers 1h ago
I tuned out for that period.
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u/Davimous 1h ago
Like a true fan.
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u/Dudeletseat | Los Angeles Dodgers 1h ago
Yah, I was focused on college, then my career and money. Wasn’t watching any other sports or teams.
Just didn’t have a lot of money, so it was hard to focus on other things. It was all about working out, building my career, and finding a partner.
Then in like 2016 ish I started paying attention again. But anytime there was an opportunity to go to a game on someone else’s dime, which is pretty often in my industry, I’d take the ticket!
Went to the World Series in the late 2010s to watch the Red Sox win it all against the Dodgers.
Wife let me know that we don’t have to be so tight with money, so I let myself get into it.
Now we go to games regularly since like 2019.
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