This season wasn’t supposed to be about Shohei Ohtani’s stats.
After three years of increasingly mind-blowing on-field achievements from the two-way player, Ohtani’s offseason jump from the Angels to the Dodgers introduced a wealth of intriguing new storylines involving the once-in-a-lifetime talent. But with elbow surgery at the end of last season restricting Ohtani to DH duties in 2024, our collective instinct was to put our hopes for more never-before-seen feats on hold for a year while he rehabbed his way back to two-way status.
In the meantime, there was no shortage of captivating subplots to monitor: A $700 million free-agent contract with unprecedented deferrals.