Justin Upton Is the Latest to Say Shohei Ohtani Is the Best Player He's Ever Seen and This Simply Has to Stop

I've had enough of this and I'm ready to put a stop to it. Earlier this year, it was C.C. Sabathia who called Ohtani the greatest baseball player he'd seen in his life. Now it's Ohtani's teammate Justin Upton.

ENOUGH!

I don't care that Ohtani is a mediocre pitcher in addition to being a pretty good hitter. Him half-assing two things does not make him more talented than a lot of players, let alone the best player in baseball right now who's on his own team. And it's not even like there are stats that could back up these claims if guys like Upton and Sabathia wanted to make a legitimate argument. Take a look at the numbers.

Ohtani has a career 126 wRC+, which is a very valuable offensive player — although he did have a pretty abysmal 2020 season, hitting .190 with a .657 OPS and -0.4 WAR. But on the whole, he's a good hitter. But the argument that him also pitching makes him one of the greats just doesn't make sense to me at all. Ohtani has a 4.39 ERA in 53.1 career innings and has now undergone Tommy John surgery. There is nothing that indicates he is going to be a very successful pitcher going forward.

And I almost get what Upton is going for when he says Ohtani's ability to throw the ball 100 miles per hour is something no other hitter in baseball can do and thus makes him the "most talented" player, but what good is being able to throw hard and supposedly pitch if he's ineffective on the mound? Mike Trout and Jacob deGrom doing one thing at an elite level are far more valuable to their teams than Ohtani is trying to do both. No team with an MVP or Cy Young candidate is lining up to try to trade him for Ohtani because he hits and pitches.

The Angels have one of the best players to ever pick up a baseball bat and all anybody can seem to talk about is Shohei Ohtani. We need to put a stop to this.