Shohei Ohtani added another achievement to his already lore-level career: he hit a walk-off grand slam for his 40th HR of the season to officially reach 40-40 status.
40-40 has only been done five other times in the history of the sport:
- Jose Canseco, who did it in his MVP 1988 season at the age of 23 likely before PEDs took over his narrative. He hit a homer and had two SBs in a Sept 23rd 9-8 game as the 104-win Oakland team was cruising into the playoffs. Doing this at the age of 23 sent shockwaves through the sport, but Canseco’s injury-riddled career never really offered another opportunity for him to get another 40/40 season; he only hit 40 homers in two other seasons, and never again came close to 40 steals.
- Barry Bonds, who did it in in 1996, in his age 31 season where he had a 188 OPS+ but somehow only finished 5th in MVP voting. He stole a bag in the final game of the season to get the achievement as his 68-win team was playing out the string. Bonds nearly did the feat again in 1997 (40/37) and then he entered his mid-30s PED era where he was much more of a slugger than a runner. It is only fitting that Bonds did the feat, considering that his father Bobby Bonds was the original pioneer for this feat, nearly doing it twice in his career in the 1970s.
- Alex Rodriguez did it in 1998 when he was just 22, hitting 42 homers and stealing 46 bags. It took a-Rod deep into September to get to 40/40 (game 153), getting his 40th homer for a middling Seattle team out of the playoffs. He added a couple more dongs and a couple more SBs to pad the stats. Like Canseco, doing this at age 22 seemed to really portend A-Rod repeating the feat for years to come, and indeed A-Rod became a home-run machine, hitting 40+ homers each season for basically the next decade, but he never came close to 40 SBs again despite being in his mid-20s prime.
- Our own Alfonso Soriano, who did it for our awful 2006 Washington Nationals team during his one season here. The team signed him to a 1yr/ $10M deal as kind of a pillow contract after he had an ignominious exit from NY and a couple of middling seasons in Texas, and the early news was dominated by the team’s fight with him over where he was going to play. He initially refused to head to the outfield but eventually grudgingly trotted out in spring training to take his left field spot, where he played the rest of his career. Once we got past that, he certainly delivered for us; he was our all star that year and made national news with his 40/40 achievement. Soriano had been threatening 40/40 for a while, nearly doing it for New York in 2002 (39/41) and again in 2003 (38/35). In fact, he should have gotten the achievement in that 2022 season: he sat at 39 hrs and 40 SBs for two weeks in September but couldn’t get that 40th homer. As soon as he signed a big money deal with the Cubs for 2007 (manager, Lou Pinella, same guy managing A-Rod in his 40/40 time), his SBs dropped off considerably and he never came close again.
- Ronald Acuna who went for 41/73 last season in his age 25 season, taking full advantage of the new pitching rules (which we’ll touch on later) to run up his SB count early and then getting his 40th homer deep into September to achieve the result. He hit his 40th in later september, right in the same game 153-154 range as most of the guys above, so he had some time to spare. Acuna nearly did the feat at age 22, going 41/37 in 2019, so this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. Unfortunately for Acuna, he blew out his ACL in May of this year, so it may be some time before we see him challenge 40/40 again. Acuna is still in his prime, and seems like an easy threat for 40/40 for a few more years assuming he gets the confidence back in his knee.
I feel like there should have been a 40/40 season prior to 1988, but likely candidates like Bobby Bonds, Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays, and a couple others just never quite made it there. Mantle never prioritized SBs and had a very bad knee injury early in his career, Bonds (as discussed above) nearly got there a couple times, Mays came close a couple times very early in his career in NY, Hank Aaron had a 44/31 season in the early 60s but was more of a steady power presence.
That leaves us with Ohtani, who as of this writing has exactly 40 hrs and 40 SBs, and achieved the plateau at least a month earlier than any of the 5 previous guys. Amazing. One just has to ask … does he have a shot at 50/50? Yeah, I think he does. He achieved this feat in game 129 of the season (126 that he played), which is amazing enough, but may just leave him enough time to do a 50/50 season.
Ohtani is averaging one HR every 14.45 PAs, and averaging one SB every 3.15 games. Assuming he plays every game the rest of the way (he’s played in 126 of the 129 games for the Dodgers, they have 33 games left, so I’ll assume he plays in 30 of those games, averaging 4.5 PAs per game).
- 30 games, 4.5PAs/game = 135 PAs left this season, divided by 1 hr/14.45 PAs = 9.3 homers projected the rest of the way.
- 30 games, one SB every 3.15 games = 9.5SBs projected the rest of the way.
So Ohtani statistically projects to a 49/49 season right now, rounding those numbers down. If he gets hot, or if he plays every game the rest of the way out maybe he gets enough additional looks to get to 50/50.
The new pitching rules have become a boon for stolen bases in the league, something that MLB knew quite well when they went to pitch clocks and limits on pickoff attempts. A few years ago the SB leaders were leading the league with 40-50 SBs. Already this year we have guys with 60 and its mid-august. And some of these guys have power: Elly De La Cruz leads the league with 60 SBs right now and he has 22 Homers to go with it and he’s in his 2nd pro season. Jose Ramirez isn’t exactly known for his speed, but he’s already sitting on a 30/30 season himself and could make a push for 40/40 with a hot September. So, hopefully we’ll see more of this going forward.
It should be exciting to see if he can get there.