Shohei Ohtani and the Unusual, Improbable, So High, Very Rad Run-to-RBI Ratio

Shohei Ohtani leads the National League in runs. It’s not even close. He has scored 44 times in 2025. That’s 10 more runs than Fernando Tatis Jr., the next highest-scoring NL player. A couple of qualified NL batters haven’t even scored 10 runs yet this season.

Ohtani does not lead the National League in RBI. Not even close. If you visit our leaderboards and sort by RBI, you’ll have to click to the second page of names to find the reigning NL RBI king. Ohtani is tied for 36th in the senior circuit with 21 runs batted in. That’s only one more than the league median for a qualified hitter. Here’s another way to put it: The average NL batter has one RBI for every 8.8 plate appearances. Ohtani has averaged one RBI every 8.7 PA. It’s not so often that Ohtani is on the second page. It’s not so often that he’s a rounding error away from league average.

Runs and RBI might not be the best metrics for evaluating past performance or projecting the future, but they’re still two of the foremost storytelling statistics. So far, the story of Ohtani’s season is that he is scoring runs at an almost unbelievable rate but driving them in at a pedestrian pace. Since the beginning of the Live Ball era in 1920, we have records of 11,326 individual player seasons of at least 500 PA. In just 481 of those seasons, fewer than 5%, did the player finish with a higher run-to-RBI ratio than Ohtani’s current mark of 44:21 (2.095). As per usual, Ohtani stands out even among that small group of players. Take a look at this list of every player from the past decade who’s had a single-season run-to-RBI ratio higher than Ohtani’s 2.095. I’d like you to try and see if maybe, just maybe, you have a keen enough eye to spot the difference between Ohtani and the others:

Through 39 games and 183 plate appearances, Ohtani has hit as many or more home runs as all but one of those players did for the entire season. His .333 ISO is more than double any of theirs. All in all, of the aforementioned 481 players, from names like Ivy Griffin, Carson Bigbee, and Morrie Rath in 1920 to Myles Straw in 2022, none finished with even as many as 20 home runs. Only 11 surpassed 15. The median of the group is three homers. Ohtani is on pace for 47. Similarly, none of those 481 finished with an isolated power of .200 or above. The closest was Rickie Weeks Jr. with a .198 ISO in 2017. Meanwhile, the highest era-adjusted ISO belongs to Snuffy Stirnweiss, whose .142 ISO in 1944 was 44% better than the league average. Ohtani’s ISO is currently 122% better than league average. To find any player with a higher run-to-RBI ratio and a higher adjusted ISO than Ohtani, you have to drop the playing time threshold significantly and go all the way back to 1880, when Harry Stovey scored 76 runs with 28 RBI for the 1880 Worcester Worcesters. His ISO was .189. His adjusted ISO was 245.

Simply put, we’ve never seen a power hitter of Ohtani’s caliber post such a lopsided run-to-RBI ratio over a full season. Heck, we’ve never seen a hitter of his caliber pull it off; the “power” qualifier isn’t necessary. Only two of those 481 players finished the year with a wRC+ above 150: Tony Gwynn and Wade Boggs. Here’s how those two seasons from those two Hall of Famers stack up to Ohtani in 2025:

Furthermore, we don’t need fancy math like run-to-RBI ratios or complex modern stats like wRC+ to prove that what Ohtani’s doing is historic. He is on pace to score 174 runs. Only three players in major league history have scored more than 174 times in a season: Sliding Billy Hamilton (198 in 1894), Tom Brown (177 in 1891), and Babe Ruth (177 in 1921). Indeed, if you look at the single-season runs leaders page on Baseball Reference, you’ll find only black-and-white photos. You have to scroll down to Jeff Bagwell, tied for 30th place with a 152-run season in 2000, to find anyone with a color photo on his player page. While it’s unlikely that Ohtani will keep up his current pace, he only needs to score another 109 runs in the Dodgers’ 121 remaining games to surpass Bagwell for the highest single-season runs total since World War II. That won’t be easy either. To score 109 runs in 121 games is to score at a 146-run full-season pace; last year, Ohtani led the majors with a career-best 134 runs. Still, it’s yet another reason to tune in to Dodgers games whenever Ohtani is up to bat or on the bases.

Of course, it’s not surprising to see Ohtani scoring a ton of runs. He has great on-base skills, he runs well, and he anchors the best offensive team in the National League. What’s really surprising about all this is his lack of RBI, considering how often he racks up hits, extra-base hits, and home runs. Part of what’s going on is that he has batted leadoff in all 39 games he’s played this year. That means the only way he can record an RBI in his first plate appearance is to hit a home run. In other words, he takes one trip to the plate every game in which it is impossible for him to have more RBI than runs scored. In addition, because he is not hitting behind Mookie Betts and/or Freddie Freeman, he’s less likely to come up to bat with runners on base in any given plate appearance, because the spots ahead of him are at the bottom of the order. That’s precisely why it’s historically been so uncommon for prolific power hitters like Ohtani to bat in the leadoff spot.

Yet, Ohtani’s position in the batting order doesn’t explain everything. He took over as the Los Angeles leadoff hitter last June when Betts landed on the IL. From June 17 through the end of the 2024 season, Ohtani took all of his plate appearances from the leadoff spot. Overall, his offensive production in that span was quite similar to his offensive production in 2025, but one difference was he recorded 84 RBI and scored 81 runs. Moreover, he averaged significantly more RBI-per-PA from that point on than he had earlier in the 2024 season, helping him finish with an NL-leading 130 RBI. He was leading off then, and he’s leading off now. What changed?

Well, from June 17 through the end of the 2024 season, the Dodgers led all teams in OBP and wRC+ from the bottom third of the batting order. Their 7-9 hitters reached base at a .331 clip with a 115 wRC+. Those are better numbers than most teams got out of their 1-3 hitters in the same span. In contrast, the 2025 Dodgers rank 24th in OBP (.283) and 25th in wRC+ (73) from their 7-8-9 hitters. This year more than last, the difference between the caliber of hitters batting in front of Ohtani and those batting behind him is massive. The Dodgers’ 2-4 hitters have a league-leading 169 wRC+. The 96 points of wRC+ that separate their 2-4 hitters and 7-9 hitters make for easily the largest differential in the sport; the Mets rank second with a 66-point gap. Indeed, it’s the largest differential in any season since at least 2002, which is as far back as our splits leaderboards will take me. With that in mind, it’s no wonder Ohtani has more than twice as many runs as RBI; the hitters behind him have been more than twice as productive as those in front of him.

Except that still doesn’t completely explain why his RBI total is so low. According to Baseball Reference, Ohtani has driven in just nine of the 83 runners on base when he’s batted this season. (Keep in mind that 12 of the 21 runners he’s batted in have been himself.) His 10.8% RBI conversion rate is easily the lowest of his career and puts him among the bottom 30 qualified hitters this season. That means it’s not just about a lack of opportunity. To that point, take a look at Ohtani’s numbers with the bases empty, with runners on, and with RISP:

First things first, Ohtani has been a productive hitter in each of these base-state situations. Second of all, we’re dealing with tiny samples now, and that’s important to remember. Still, it’s hard to ignore that half of his eight doubles, three-quarters of his 12 home runs, and all four of his triples this year have come with the bases empty. On a related note, and as you might have gleaned from the massive difference in his walk rates with and without runners on, Ohtani hasn’t been getting nearly as many good pitches to hit with runners on base. The table below shows how his zone rate compares to the league average in different base states – and these numbers don’t even include the four times he has been intentionally walked with runners in scoring position:

Similarly, look at how many more garbage pitches Ohtani has seen when he has come up with a chance to drive in a baserunner:

My first question when I saw those numbers was: Is this really any different from last year? After all, it’s not as if pitchers didn’t know how dangerous Ohtani was in 2024. And yet, the numbers really are quite different:

Once again, keep in mind that the samples are small, but it sure seems like opposing pitchers have been more scared to challenge Ohtani with runners on base in 2025 than they were last year. Perhaps in 2024, pitchers figured there was no good reason to pitch around Ohtani, because they’d just have to face the hitters behind him, namely Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Teoscar Hernández. By now, however, pitchers might have realized that while the rest of the lineup is fearsome, Ohtani is still that much better than everyone else. Before you read the stat I’m about to cite, remember that Los Angeles’ 2-4 hitters have combined for a higher wRC+ than the 2-4 hitters of any other team in the sport this season. Even so, the difference between the Dodgers’ 188 wRC+ from the leadoff spot and their 169 wRC+ from their 2-4 hitters is the fifth-highest gap in the majors. It appears Ohtani’s opponents are well aware of that, and they’re making it harder than ever for him to rack up RBI. So, naturally, Ohtani responded to this by scoring runs at a near-historic pace.

This is the second time I’ve written about Ohtani here at FanGraphs. It’s been a happy accident on both occasions. A couple of years ago, I was curious about which starting pitcher had the biggest velocity differential between his four-seam fastball and sinker. I found Ohtani. This time, on another whim, I was looking for players with unusual run-to-RBI ratios. Once again, a story about Ohtani stumbled into my lap. We know by now that this guy is a unicorn. He pitches and he hits. He had the first 50/50 season in major league history. He’s the only full-time DH to ever win an MVP, and indeed, he’s such a phenomenal hitter that he would continue to be a perennial MVP contender even if he never pitched again or stole another base. Ohtani receives so much attention for being unique that sometimes it almost feels boring to talk about how special he is. And then, of course, he goes and finds yet another way to be absolutely unlike anyone else.