Shohei Ohtani is now one of two players in MLB history to win more than three MVP awards. The other is Barry Bonds.
The Los Angeles Dodgers superstar was named National League MVP on Thursday for the second straight year. Like in his first season with the Dodgers, he received the award not long after winning the World Series.
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And like in the other three times he won MVP, he did so unanimously with all 30 BBWAA votes, beating out finalists Kyle Schwarber and Juan Soto. He is the first player to ever win MVP unanimously four times.
Ohtani is only the second player in MLB history to win both an MVP award and a World Series in back-to-back years, joining Joe Morgan in 1975 and 1976. Unlike Morgan, he also won an individual postseason award with NLCS MVP this year. Ohtani is also the first player in history to win both AL and NL MVP multiple times.
So it’s safe to say he’s off to a good start in Chavez Ravine.
Ohtani had previously been in a tie with 10 other players for the second-most MVP awards in history behind Bonds’ seven. The group that Ohtani just surpassed: Jimmie Foxx, Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Yogi Berra, Roy Campanella, Mickey Mantle, Mike Schmidt, Alex Rodriguez, and former teammates Albert Pujols and Mike Trout.
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It’s probably worth noting names like Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth or Lou Gehrig might have come up here had the modern form of the MVP stretched back further than 1931.
Shohei Ohtani traded baserunning for pitching in 2025
Ohtani has won two MVP awards in two years with the Dodgers, but both campaigns were quite different, at least outside the plate.
In 2024, Ohtani was a .310/.390/.646 hitter with a Dodgers-record 54 home runs. In 2025, he was a .282/.392/.622 hitter with 55 home runs. In both seasons, he led MLB in total bases and runs and ranked behind only Aaron Judge in OPS+.
Last year, however, saw Ohtani unable to pitch after undergoing UCL surgery at the end of the 2023 season. So he responded by focusing on his baserunning and posted the first 50-homer, 50-stolen base season in MLB history, while finishing a few hits short of a Triple Crown.
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Ohtani returned to the mound this season in a limited capacity. He didn’t pitch in a game until June, didn’t pitch into the fourth inning until July and didn’t reach the sixth inning until his final start of the season on Sept. 23. The Dodgers’ plan was clear: Make sure he can pitch in the playoffs, with the regular season taking a back seat.
In those limited spurts, Ohtani was more than effective. He posted a 2.87 ERA and his 1.90 FIP was the second-best in MLB among pitchers with at least 40 innings, behind only Aroldis Chapman. His 47 innings pitched were still more than Ruth ever threw during his run on the New York Yankees.
With pitching back on his to-do list, Ohtani went back to his usual baserunning load with only 26 attempts in 2025. Still, that combination of elite hitting, limited pitching and some baserunning made him the easy choice for MVP.
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Even taking his pitching out of it, Ohtani’s overall production at the plate still put him ahead of finalists Kyle Schwarber and Juan Soto.
2025 season
We are living in Shohei Ohtani’s world
With MVP voting done at the end of the regular season, Ohtani’s win doesn’t reflect what he did in the postseason. That includes games such as perhaps the greatest individual performance in MLB history and that time he shattered a league record by reaching base nine times in the World Series (with some help from the Toronto Blue Jays).
When Ohtani signed his 10-year, $700 million with the Dodgers in 2023, the price shocked a baseball world that had never seen a contract larger than Trout’s $426 million deal. And two years later, that contract, and its deferrals, could not look like a bigger bargain.
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Ohtani has been the most valuable player in the NL in back-to-back years, and a World Series champion in back-to-back years. He has transformed the business of the Dodgers, turning them into an advertising powerhouse in his native Japan, one of the richest countries in the world and a nation that worships him at a level of celebrity beyond anything in the United States. He has a dog that has drawn a standing ovation at Dodger Stadium and is about to be the subject of a children’s book.
Consider all of the financial advantages Ohtani brings before stepping onto the field, and then consider that two players, Soto and Vladimir Guerrero Jr., already have contracts larger than his when factoring in inflation with the deferrals.
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It’s quite possible Ohtani has already paid for himself as far as the Dodgers are concerned. The team had an enormous set of advantages, such as its enormous TV contract and the largest stadium in MLB, but Ohtani’s success has sent them to a higher plane, and there’s no telling if they come down as long as he’s on the field.
