Shohei Ohtani reached a career milestone Saturday night. The Los Angeles Angels two-way superstar slugged his 100th career major league home run, taking Oakland Athletics rookie Adam Oller deep at RingCentral Coliseum. He is the third Japanese player in MLB history with 100 homers, joining Hideki Matsui (175) and Ichiro Suzuki (117).
Here is Ohtani’s milestone blast:
Ohtani hit 46 of his first 99 career home runs last season, when he was named AL MVP unanimously. He hit 22 home runs en route to being named AL Rookie of the Year in 2018, and he hit another 18 home runs in 2019 while rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. During the shortened 2020 season Ohtani hit seven homers.
Of course, Otani also plies is trade on the mound. He has 268 strikeouts in 216 MLB innings and joins Babe Ruth as the only players in history with at least 100 home runs as a hitter and 250 strikeouts as a pitcher. Ruth hit 714 home runs in his historic career and also struck out 488 batters as a pitcher.
The 27-year-old Ohtani took a .250/.308/.432 batting line and six home runs into Saturday’s doubleheader. He also has a 2.78 ERA with 46 strikeouts in 32 1/3 innings. Ohtani has started slowly relative to the standard he set last year, though he’s been very good overall.
Ohtani is the 20th player to hit 100 home runs for the Angels. He could climb as high as 12th on the franchise’s all-time home run leaderboard by the end of the season (Doug DeCinces with 130).
Prior to joining the Angels, Ohtani hit 48 home runs in parts of five seasons with the Nippon Ham Fighters in Japan, so he’s closing in on 150 professional home runs between the two leagues.
