It was a bumpy landing, but Shohei Ohtani made his mark in 2024 with a season that will be remembered as one of the greatest in the history of the sport.

Think of the pressure on the Japanese superstar as he put pen to paper on a $700 million contract. Remember how he spent so much time off the field rehabilitating a surgically repaired right elbow. Think of the personal conflict he experienced when it was revealed that his best friend had stolen millions of dollars from him.

Ohtani could have been down until 2024. He wouldn’t have been able to live up to baseball’s greatest expectations, and he would have had plenty of excuses for it. Instead, he put together a campaign that belongs as much in Japanese folklore as it does in the annals of baseball history.

It’s all about the first MLB season with 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases. It didn’t feel possible until Ohtani did it. Before the 2024 season, the closest Alex Rodriguez had come was 1998 with 42 home runs and 46 sacks.

Ohtani ended up hitting 54 home runs and stealing 59 bases, and he crossed the 50-50 threshold in the biggest way possible.

No player has defined the word “unprecedented” like Ohtani, and he distilled it in one game on September 19th when he recorded three home runs, two stolen bases, five extra-base hits, six hits and 10 RBI. No player had achieved all of these totals in any number of games throughout his career, and Ohtani did it all in one day at Marlins Park.

There is now part 2 of this statistic. No player in his career had hit 50 home runs in a season, stolen 50 bases in a season, won MVP and won a World Series title. With the Dodgers’ World Series victory in Game 5 on Wednesday and Ohtani likely to become the unanimous MVP of the National League, he’s back to enjoying career prosperity in no time.

Here’s how to turn a subpar World Series performance into a footnote: Be the player who got your team there, then let your teammates cheer you up. And make no mistake – the Dodgers would have been in a dire situation if they hadn’t had Ohtani this year.

It is as close to an objective fact as possible. Baseball Reference estimates that Ohtani had 9.2 more wins in his season than his replacement, the same as a designated hitter. Had the Dodgers not acquired him and likely re-signed JD Martinez instead, they would have been left with a DH who posted 0.5 WAR in 2024.

With nine fewer wins, the Dodgers don’t have the best MLB record or home field advantage in the playoffs. With nine fewer wins, they have a record of 89-73, the same record as the Arizona Diamondbacks, who came into the game in first place. Without Ohtani, the Dodgers probably wouldn’t even be a playoff team this year.

So Ohtani can be forgiven for going 2-for-19 in the 2024 World Series, especially since it wasn’t entirely clear after Game 2 whether he should have played at all, when he was in pain after a stolen base attempt Dirt squirmed. He was later diagnosed with a mild subluxation and given the green light to continue playing, but his swing never looked quite right after the series arrived at Yankee Stadium, and earlier this week Ohtani failed to undergo offseason surgery to correct the problem out of.

Ohtani gave his all physically this season and received his first World Series ring for it. It was an acknowledgment of the pitch the Dodgers gave him last winter, as he said when he was introduced as a Dodger:

Ohtani and teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto have now won a World Series title, a Japan Series title and a World Baseball Classic title at the age of 30. This championship is considered a seminal moment for Japan, which watched its national hero reach the peak of his career just before 1 p.m. local time on a working day.

And just think: Ohtani can pitch again next year.