One thing people repeatedly said about Shohei Ohtani throughout the 2024 season was:

“He’s technically still a rehabbing pitcher.”

The procedure Ohtani underwent in September 2023 was a newer hybrid form of Tommy John surgery.

Traditional Tommy John surgery involves transplanting a tendon from another part of the body into the elbow.

The hybrid version reinforces the transplanted tendon with an internal brace — an artificial ligament designed to strengthen the repair.

Although recovery from this newer procedure can progress differently from standard Tommy John surgery, it still generally requires more than a year of rehabilitation before a pitcher can fully return to competitive pitching.

Most pitchers spend that entire period focused solely on rehab.

Ohtani, however, was doing something almost unimaginable.

During the day, he worked through the demanding rehabilitation process to return as a pitcher.

At night, he took the field as the Dodgers’ designated hitter and produced one of the greatest offensive seasons in MLB history — including the league’s first-ever “50–50” season.

To other players, it hardly seemed believable.

Teammate Freddie Freeman described it this way:

“Shohei spends every day stretching and rehabbing his arm so he can pitch again. Then he goes out into the game, flips a switch, and becomes the best hitter in baseball. That’s the part I can’t believe.”

Ohtani himself explained that he consciously separated rehab from competition.

“When I play as a hitter, I try to focus only on hitting.”

Simple as the words may sound, maintaining that kind of mental separation — while simultaneously rehabbing as a pitcher and performing at an MVP level as a hitter — was something almost nobody else could imagine doing.

Source

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

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