Shohei Ohtani defied statcast gods with opposite field home run

Shohei Ohtani defied the statcast gods yet again. This time, he did so with a home run that hasn’t been hit by a lefty in the entire statcast era.

It seems like every other day, Shohei Ohtani is doing something that’s never been done in the history of baseball. This typically has to do with the fact that he’s such a successful two-way player. But just recently, he was able to shock baseball fans and analysts with just his bat alone.

Shohei Ohtani ranks second in the American League in strikeouts as part of being on the cusp of Cy Young candidacy. But he took the world by storm with his AL-leading 20th and 21st home runs of the 2023 campaign.

Shohei Ohtani 453-foot home run defies statcast, all logic

It began with Ohtani slugging a 459-foot opposite-field home run on Monday. Just two days later, Ohtani would shatter statcast norms with his 21st homer of the season.

Since 2015, left-handed hitters have hit 90 batted balls with an exit velocity over 116 mph. Understandably, the hardest hit balls tend to be to the pull side, with some venturing up the middle. But Ohtani isn’t like the rest of the league.

His 116 mph home run was blasted into the second deck of left-center field, marking the first time in the statcast era that a lefty has hit a ball 116 mph to the opposite field. That doesn’t mean that it’s the first home run to the opposite field that was hit this hard — that means his home run was the first batted ball hit that hard to the opposite field, including singles, doubles, triples, and outs.

Since 2015, lefties have slugged 34 home runs at an exit velocity above 116. Six of these have been up the middle, while 27 have been pulled, with a large majority of them being pulled right down the line.

Not Ohtani though. His home run landed a few hundred feet closer to the left field line than the rest of the batted balls. After such a monumental homer, the Angels superstar takes the mound on Thursday night. What can’t the Japanese sensation do?