Who Wins the Ultimate Matchup: Shohei Ohtani the Hitter or Shohei Ohtani the Pitcher?

Who's ready to argue about a hypothetical scenario that could never happen outside of a video game?

Shohei Ohtani grabs his 34-inch wooden crushing device, straps an elbow guard onto his right arm and some padding to his right wrist, takes a few practice cuts, digs into the left-handed batter's box and looks up to lock eyes with...

Shohei Ohtani: The right-handed, flame-throwing, filth-slinging, early favorite to win the 2023 American League Cy Young Award.

Does Ohtani hit the 134th home run of his MLB career?

Or does Ohtani record his 480th strikeout as a pitcher in the big leagues?

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Initial Observations/Suppositions

Early in his career, Ohtani the Pitcher would have absolutely dominated this matchup with his off-speed stuff.

Per Baseball Savant, between 2018 and 2019, 31 of Ohtani's 40 home runs came against fastballs. (He was, and still is, deadliest against sinkers.) He had a .616 slugging percentage against fastballs compared to .425 against off-speed and breaking pitches. And while he only pitched 51.2 innings between those two seasons, his splitter, sweeper and curveball were all drastically more destructive than his four-seamer.

Over the past three years, however, things have changed.

Meg Oliphant/Getty Images

In 2021, half Ohtani's 46 home runs came against non-fastballs, as the AL MVP kind of mashed everything—but especially sliders, against which he slugged .724. Last year, 18 of his 34 home runs were on non-fastballs, and he hit .346 against curveballs. And this year, Ohtani's six homers have come against a sinker, a slider, a curveball, a changeup and a pair of those hip and trendy sweepers.

For his first few years in the big leagues, he annihilated sinkers but often flailed at the off-speed stuff.

These days, he's a much more indiscriminate hitter.

All the while, Ohtani has also evolved on the mound.

He now throws his sweeper nearly 50 percent of the time, almost using his 97 mph four-seamer as his change-of-pace pitch to permanently keep hitters off-balance. And this season, he has barely even used the splitter, seemingly saving that strikeout specialty (more on that later) for a rainy day.

It sure must be nice to be putting up historic numbers while only using your best pitch 6.5 percent of the time.

Given how well he has pitched this season, we've got to give the advantage to Ohtani the Pitcher, right?

Factoring in Thursday's three-hit day, Ohtani the Hitter has been solid, batting .278/.343/.526 with six home runs. But Ohtani the Pitcher has been operating at a legendary level, posting a 1.85 ERA, 0.82 WHIP and 12.2 K/9 through his first six starts.

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Batting Splits and Pitch Types

Well, let's talk about the splits. Can we talk about the splits? Please, everyone. I've been dying to talk about the splits with you all day.

For his career, Ohtani the Hitter is batting .272 and slugging .551 against right-handed pitchers. And while Ohtani the Pitcher has great numbers against left-handed hitters—.215 average and .352 slugging—those marks at least look a little mortal compared to the way he mows down right-handed hitters.

Factoring in handedness of both pitcher and batter at least starts to level the playing field.

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Sweepers

Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images

Moreover, Ohtani the Hitter has demolished sweepers from right-handers over the past three seasons—which, again, Ohtani the Pitcher is throwing nearly 50 percent of the time early on this year.

Per Baseball Savant, Ohtani the Hitter has only seen 80 sweepers from right-handers since the beginning of 2021, and only 20 of those were the final pitch of the at-bat. So, even though we're talking about more than two full seasons, it is, admittedly, a small sample size.

From those 20 sweepers, though, Ohtani has five home runs, one triple and seven strikeouts.

That's a 35 percent strikeout rate, but it's also an outrageous 1.278 slugging percentage. And while it might be a much different story when Ohtani the Hitter has to deal with Ohtani the Pitcher's sweepers as opposed to those of Johnny Four-Seamer, he sure does see that pitch well at the dish.

Courtesy of Rob Friedman (aka Pitching Ninja), here's Ohtani mowing down the Royals in the seventh inning with a sweeper-curveball-sweeper combo. Suffice it to say, this is not the type of movement your average pitcher is able to generate, particularly as he's approaching and surpassing the century mark for pitches in the game:

Of the three sweepers he put in play against right-handers in 2021, the average exit velocity was 108.6 mph.

The one that he put in play this season? A 116.7 MPH tater off Clarke Schmidt.

But let's pull a little more at that pitch-type thread.

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Changeups

Over the past four seasons, Ohtani the Hitter has been, by no small margin, least effective against changeups. We're talking a .214 hitter with a 24.8 percent K rate.

However, a changeup is not part of Ohtani the Pitcher's deep arsenal. He's got the sweeper, a four-seamer, a cutter, a splitter, a curveball and, every once in a blue moon, a sinker. But no conventional changeup among his off-speed stuff.

It's plenty to keep Ohtani the Hitter guessing, but at least he doesn't need to be on the lookout for his Achilles' heel.

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Splitters

All that said, the out pitch in this matchup would surely be the splitter, and it would give Ohtani the Pitcher a considerable advantage if we're talking about one magical at-bat for all the marbles.

Again, it's curious that he hasn't been going to this well often in 2023, but in Ohtani the Pitcher's career, left-handed hitters are 20-for-180 (.111) with three home runs and 106 strikeouts against the splitter.

Compared to those preposterous numbers, at least Ohtani the Hitter has been respectable against right-handed splitters. Still, 11-for-58 (.190) with three home runs and 20 strikeouts is a far cry from promising.

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So...Who Would Win?

In a single at-bat, give me Ohtani the Pitcher, no questions asked. While it's plausible Ohtani the Hitter could tee off on the pitcher's sweeper, there's no need for the pitcher to use it. He could just give himself a steady diet of splitters.

What if we're not talking about just one at-bat, though?

What if it's an entire season in which Ohtani the Hitter only faces Ohtani the Pitcher and vice versa?

He can't very well just throw a few thousand splitters like some kind of knuckleballer, right?

Ohtani would end up throwing a lot of sweepers and a lot of four-seamers, which his bat-wielding clone would be more than capable of hitting a long way.

(Provided he can actually identify the difference out of the pitcher's hand, of course. Check out this laughable overlay, again courtesy of Pitching Ninja:)

In a matchup between a career .267 hitter with a .530 slugging percentage and a pitcher who has a career batting average against of .197 and a slugging percentage against of .318, a batting average of .232 or above and a slugging percentage of .425 or better would be a theoretical win for the hitter, as those marks are closer to the hitter's norms than they are to the pitcher's norms.

While I would absolutely take Ohtani the Pitcher for a single do-or-die at-bat because of the splitter, I believe Ohtani the Hitter would win out with at least a .240 batting average (and probably around a .475 slugging percentage) against a full season's worth of sweepers and four-seamers.

Having said that, I'd pay an irresponsible amount of money to be proven wrong if it meant getting to watch that matchup a few hundred times—just like some team is going to pay an irresponsible amount of money this offseason to let Ohtani both hit and pitch against less sensational talent for the next decade.

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Unless otherwise noted, statistics current through the start of play Thursday.

Kerry Miller covers Major League Baseball and men's college basketball for Bleacher Report. You can find him on Twitter: @kerrancejames.