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The story
With the 2026 MLB season now over, Shohei Ohtani settling for 5th place in the overall WAR rankings — the stat meant to capture a player’s total value — became a hot topic on 5ch’s “Whatever Live” sports board. Breaking down the numbers, his batting WAR was 3.7 (40th) and his pitching WAR was 2.9 (34th) — neither figure is anything special on its own for a two-way player. It also came out that teammate Seiya Suzuki actually beat Ohtani in batting WAR alone, and the thread split over whether the two-way experiment is still worth it, and how to judge a season plagued by injuries.
(Note: Mijirowski picked up his 16th win of the season in his final start)
1. PCA (Pete Crow-Armstrong) — 10.6
2. Witt Jr. — 7.0
Source: fangraphs.com / original article here
What people said
Being the #1 pitcher and still this low…
He was probably being handled carefully
His innings pitched were on the low side too
Pitching WAR 2.9 (34th)
Broken down individually, that's rough
Is there even a point to the two-way thing at this rate?
Well yeah, obviously — starters only take the mound once a week and only go 6 or 7 innings. Position players are out there for all 9 innings every single day
In MLB it's a 4-5 day rotation though
Then why was Ohtani only throwing 6 innings and 90 pitches on 6 days' rest…?
Average per year: 1.8
There's just no point to the two-way thing at these numbers
Because without the two-way roster rule, Yoshinobu Yamamoto would get worked into the ground
Lol, his career WAR is the same as Uehara's, and Uehara didn't even go to MLB until he was almost 40
Guys who can't field don't show up here
Trout, Judge, Betts, and Bobby Witt Jr. all hit 10 WAR as position players
And this is supposedly his 'washed up, off year' that everyone keeps complaining about
Ohtani's a monster
This crushes even the career-best seasons of everyone else
Ohtani in a terrible slump > everyone else's career year
Can't even read the data properly, can you?
Shohei Ohtani — batting WAR 3.7 (22nd in the league)
Seiya Suzuki — batting WAR 4.6 (10th in the league)
If WAR includes defense, then it's only fair to include Ohtani's pitching WAR too
Not that I hate him, I just watched because he was dominating — doesn't mean I'm a fan though
There's no heartwarming backstory to him or anything
Honestly there's no struggle story with him, he's just been blessed from the start
When he was putting up numbers I thought he was amazing, but I never really liked him as a person
Suzuki's doing well, sure, but until now nobody would've even compared him to Ohtani — the gap was just too big
The fact that a guy actually playing defense is beating a DH-only guy in batting WAR is already weird on its own
Suzuki was DH-only last year too and his OPS is basically unchanged from this year — defensive workload barely matters unless you're playing shortstop or catcher anyway
And honestly it's not even clear if Ohtani can pitch properly again going forward
Even if he quits the two-way thing, if his knee's shot he probably can't even do proper defensive drills
If he's not pitching, he can just bulk up and hit 50 home runs
He's on a different level from some guy who bulked up and only managed 32
I get that, but there are quite a few people gleefully celebrating his numbers dropping too, right?
I just wonder what's so satisfying about that
I think it's just that his fanboys picked fights with not only other baseball players but other athletes in general, one too many times lol
In the past, even narrowing it down to just batting WAR, it was a total blowout [in Ohtani's favor]
I still don't think Ohtani's overall combined value is actually below Suzuki's even now, but the fact that he lost even in the batting-only comparison is a decline nobody would've imagined before
It might not just be aging; his priorities in life may have shifted too.
Either way, looking forward to next season.
The problem is he's not aware of that and is still trying to keep up his old workload
He'll probably get crushed again next year anyway though
Suzuki's having a career year in his contract year (lit. "job-hunting year")
Ohtani's just a guy whose numbers dropped because of injury
Sure, that's how it'll go if he commits to being a batter only
But if he insists on sticking with the two-way thing, it's obvious he'll get injured again next year too
Even in his younger years there were barely any seasons where he actually managed to balance both
If two-way is off the table, playing defense is the only way left to reach fWAR 10
A body that breaks down from just a little bit of pitching obviously can't handle playing defense every single day
He's DH-only from here on out lol
Well, he could probably manage in the outfield
There's not a single injury-prone player who became truly great
Every player who gets called a legend stays completely injury-free right up until their later years
No matter how well you hit or pitch, if you get injured it's all wasted
It all goes down the drain
Wait, is Ohtani not already a legend?
Background and Key Points of the Debate
WAR is a metric that converts multiple elements — batting, baserunning, defense, and pitching — into a single number measured against a replacement-level player, and the fewer chances a player gets to play, the harder it is for that number to grow. Because Ohtani was coming off an injury and had his starts and innings limited, his pitching WAR was always likely to come in low; and since he’s DH-only as a batter, there’s no bonus from defensive value built into the metric, so even strong batting numbers don’t easily translate into a top batting-WAR ranking. The point of contention in the thread was whether the value of a two-way player should be measured by “batting WAR plus pitching WAR combined,” or whether he should be judged by the same standard as single-position players — and by design, WAR itself doesn’t clearly settle which approach is correct. It’s also worth keeping in mind that this was a year in which playing time itself was reduced due to injury, which was one factor behind the drop in ranking.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (“Whatever Live G”) thread “[Sad News] Shohei Ohtani Falls to 5th in WAR Rankings Right at the Very End, Season Over.”
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