Since 2021, many people around baseball have repeatedly wondered whether Shohei Ohtani could possibly surpass his previous accomplishments.

The skepticism was understandable.

In 2021, Ohtani won nine games as a pitcher, hit 46 home runs, and captured his first MVP award.

In 2022, although his home run total dropped slightly to 34, he won 15 games on the mound.

Then in 2023, he posted another extraordinary season with 10 wins and 44 home runs, earning his second MVP award.

Had Aaron Judge not produced his historic 62-home-run season in 2022, Ohtani very likely could have won MVP that year as well.

In other words, year after year, Ohtani was already performing at the very top of Major League Baseball.

Naturally, many observers assumed that sooner or later he would reach his peak.

People thought:

“This has to be the best he can possibly be.”

And yet Ohtani continued not only to maintain those numbers, but to surpass them again and again.

When he signed with the Dodgers, Ohtani made a remarkable statement about his future as a hitter:

“When I look at myself as a hitter, I don’t think I have just one more level left to reach — I believe there are still several more levels I can climb.”

Ohtani has often described his greatest strength as his “room for growth.”

True to those words, the 2024 season became another historic chapter in his career.

And perhaps the most astonishing part is this:

Even now, Ohtani himself still believes he has not yet reached his ceiling.

Source

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

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