Shohei Ohtani is making baseball history before our eyes

The only way you can be forgiven for ignoring Shohei Ohtani’s ludicrous season with the Angels is if you live under a rock. A rock that happens to be at the bottom of a forgotten mineshaft. And that mineshaft isn’t featured on any maps, or visited by spelunkers.

Wednesday night was a classic Ohtani day at the office, which naturally means he did something impossible.

Ohtani hit his league-leading 40th home run of the season Wednesday night, becoming the fastest player in Angels history to reach the mark. Ohtani bettered a 21-year-old mark set by Troy Glaus, extending his league-leading home run total by five ahead of second place Vladimir Guerrerro Jr.

Now, that’s super cool in its own right. Sure, breaking an individual team record is mildly interesting — but probably not national news. Now, that changes entirely when you consider the fact that OHTANI WAS THE STARTING PITCHER FOR THE ANGELS AS WELL! Not only did he work an eight inning game, but he dominated in a 3-1 win over the Tigers.

Pitching eight innings with eight strikeouts and only one earned run allowed, Ohtani’s pitching is getting better and better with each game. Over his last five starts Ohtani is 5-0, with an ERA of 1.57, and recording 37 strikeouts.

On Wednesday night he dominated basically every statistical area in the entire game. Which is just hilarious.

The 27-year-old is rewriting how we think about baseball before our eyes. He’s dominating every element of the game he touches, and the only shame is that he’s locked on the 61-61 Angels, so it’s highly unlikely we’ll get to see him shine in the playoffs. As it stands the Angels have less than a 1 percent chance of making the postseason, but that doesn’t mean we can’t appreciate Ohtani for what he is: Simply incredible.