Ohtani’s production – Even with fewer homers than last season, Shohei Ohtani has kept his production near the top of the NL—rolling into Wednesday’s game in Pittsburgh with elite wRC+ numbers and a thriving combination of hard contact and patience at the plate.
Shohei Ohtani is entering Wednesday’s game in Pittsburgh with a familiar fearlessness at the plate—just without the same roar of home runs that usually follows him.
Through the Dodgers’ first 67 games, he has hit 11 homers. That’s 12 fewer than he had at this point last season. when he went on to record his second straight 50-homer campaign and finished with a career-high 55 dingers. His .521 slugging percentage entering Wednesday sits 101 points lower than his final mark in 2025 (.622).
It would be easy to call it a dip. But the numbers tell a tighter story than the homer count.
Entering Wednesday, no NL qualifier had been more productive by wRC+, where 100 is league average. Ohtani sits at 159—ahead of other top NL qualifiers also at 159: Drake Baldwin, James Wood, and Jordan Walker. Corbin Carroll is close behind at 154.
The early part of the season explains why this still feels surprising to some Dodgers fans. Ohtani managed only a 113 wRC+ over his first 41 games. Since May 12, though, he has flipped the script with a torrid stretch, slashing .414/.505/.711 with an MLB-leading 234 wRC+.
The pattern also ties to how the Dodgers managed him at the plate. Ohtani had more off-days early on as Los Angeles tried to handle his workload. Lately, that caution hasn’t lasted as long. He has been in the lineup in 23 of Los Angeles’ past 24 games.
If this feels like an off year, it’s mostly because Ohtani has set such a high bar for himself. This season may be less flashy at the top end of the stat line. but he’s still finding ways to beat pitchers with a well-rounded profile few hitters can match. He has clubbed 15 doubles and collected a pair of triples.
The homers might be down, but the damage hasn’t vanished. While Ohtani is recording fewer barrels—the types of batted balls most likely to end up in the seats—he has produced plenty of high-value contact. This season. only eight hitters have recorded more batted balls that were both hard-hit and in the launch angle sweet-spot range. The sweet spot is defined as 8-32 degrees. Ohtani has hit 47 batted balls that meet both criteria.
Not every one of those balls qualified as barrels, but they have still been extremely valuable—generating a collective .778 batting average and 1.600 slugging percentage.
He has also kept a patient approach even as pitchers have increasingly tried to pitch around him. Ohtani is walking at a 15.2% clip, nearly the same as last year’s 15.0%. Those percentile ranks across hard-hit and sweet-spot contact. plus his walk rate. help explain why he is hitting .301 with the highest on-base percentage in the NL at .417.
The combination is rare. Only eight qualifying hitters rank in the 90th percentile or better in both hard-hit rate and sweet-spot rate, and just half of them have a walk rate that also fits that same box.
So the headline might be about fewer homers—11 through 67 games, a pace 12 behind where he was last season. But the real takeaway is harder to ignore: even without the homer barrage. Ohtani is still doing the thing that made him one of baseball’s most feared bats—turning contact into results and finding routes to damage that go beyond the scoreboard fireworks.
Shohei Ohtani Dodgers homers wRC+ NL hitting Pittsburgh