Smoltz: If Shohei Ohtani Only Pitched, ‘He’d be the Best Pitcher in Baseball’

John Smoltz knows pitching. He’s in the Baseball Hall of Fame for making a career out of it as both a starter and a closer, and the FOX Sports’ analyst made it clear how he feels about the talent of Shohei Ohtani when he’s on the mound. “If all he did was pitch, he’d be the best pitcher in baseball.”

Smoltz was speaking to a panel of FOX Sports’ analysts previewing Tuesday’s 2025 MLB All-Star Game, when fellow Cooperstown inductee David Ortiz asked him about the chances of Ohtani pitching in this year’s game. Smoltz does not believe he will, not while he’s still ramping his way back up to his full workload following a second Tommy John surgery, but made sure to say that future All-Star games as a pitcher were a lock for Ohtani. 

“Shohei Ohtani is…I can’t say enough, there’s no words to describe it,” Smoltz told the panel. “I said this three years ago, and people thought I’d lost my mind. It’s a hypothetical, but if he never hits, and he pitches one year and all he does is pitch, he’d be the best pitcher in baseball. Without a doubt, I don’t have any reservations, I don’t have any what ifs.”

To back up Smoltz’s assertion here, we have Ohtani’s career where he’s worked exclusively as a hitter. The 2024 season saw Ohtani, who did not pitch at all due to the aforementioned Tommy John procedure at the end of 2023, go on to hit an NL-leading 54 home runs – a career-high – while stealing 59 bases. Ohtani led the majors in total bases with 411, produced over nine wins above replacement exclusively as a hitter and led the NL in on-base percentage (.390), slugging (.646), OPS (.988) and OPS+ (174), too. Smoltz is simply applying the same reasoning in the other direction: Ohtani’s skill is such that, given the opportunity to do just one thing instead of two, he becomes the greatest around at that one thing.

“If all he did was pitch, which he’ll never do, he’d be the best pitcher in baseball,” Smoltz continued. “That just tells you what you need to know about his athleticism, how good of a feel he has, and he can not only hit, but he can pitch.”

As Smoltz said, it’s unlikely that we’ll ever get to find out if it’s true. But given what we do know about Ohtani, it follows some clearly defined logic. Luckily, we get to watch him do both, and don’t have to choose either way – he might be the best in the game if he did one thing, but there’s nothing wrong with being one of the best at multiple things, either.

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