In professional sports, athletes often face a difficult balance between individual performance and team success.

Even in baseball, where players belong to a team, many professionals are essentially independent contractors whose careers are evaluated by their personal statistics.

Ideally, both the team and the individual succeed together.
But when that balance breaks, players sometimes prioritize their own numbers.

Shohei Ohtani has always viewed the game differently.

During his time with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters, he led the team to a Japan Series championship and was named Most Valuable Player. But later in his career with the Los Angeles Angels, he experienced a very different situation.

Despite performing at an MVP level as a two-way player, the team often struggled to win games. The frustration of excelling individually while the team continued to lose became one of the most difficult aspects of those seasons.

Even early in his career, Ohtani showed how strongly he valued team success.

In the 2015 WBSC Premier12 tournament, Japan faced South Korea in the semifinal. Ohtani started the game and delivered a dominant performance: seven scoreless innings, only one hit allowed, and eleven strikeouts.

Yet Japan ultimately lost the game after a late comeback.

After the defeat, the 21-year-old Ohtani reflected on the result.

“Even if I perform well, it’s not enough if the team loses. There’s still so much to work on—I don’t have time to feel satisfied.”

Having experienced painful losses in important moments—including during his high school years at Koshien—Ohtani developed a deep determination to win.

For him, pitching well or hitting well is never the final goal.

What matters most is whether the team wins.

Source

This quote comes from a Japanese book published in Japan and is not currently available in English.

Shohei Ohtani: Baseball Youth I — Japan Edition 2013–2018, p.208