Shohei Ohtani’s latest two-way performance for the Los Angeles Dodgers was unusual enough that baseball fans immediately started asking whether it had ever happened before.
The question came after the Dodgers’ 4-0 win over the San Diego Padres at Petco Park on Wednesday night, when Ohtani opened the game by homering on the first pitch and then threw five scoreless innings.
That box-score combination barely exists in baseball history, which is the kind of line Ohtani has made his own while reshaping what a two-way player can do.
The fan reaction landed on the right question. Rather than treating it as another Ohtani highlight, people went looking for a proper historical comparison and came up mostly empty.
A leadoff homer, then five scoreless innings
Ohtani led off the game against Padres starter Randy Vásquez and drove the first pitch out for his eighth home run of the season.
Statcast listed the homer at 111.3 mph off the bat, 404 feet, a 39-degree launch angle, on a 95.5 mph four-seam fastball from Vásquez.
He then took the mound as the Dodgers’ starter and held San Diego scoreless for five innings, pairing the leadoff blast with a clean pitching line in the same game.
