This is not an argument about who’s the better player: Shohei Ohtani, or Elly De La Cruz. Ohtani is probably the best two-way player in baseball history, and De La Cruz has 55 games to his name. The discussion is about excitement, about who’s highlight you’re watching first, about throwing a complete game on the same day you hit two homers, about things like firing a 99.8 mph relay to nab a guy at home.
Ohtani leads the league with 40 home runs, and many of them are evident right off the bat.
His power is comical. It’s up there with Yordan Álvarez, and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. as far as sluggers who wield a bat like a two-by-four, who don’t so much use a bat as much as lumber. Ohtani is leading the majors in slugging at .662, more than 60 points higher than the next guy.
To be sure, De La Cruz doesn’t lack the ability to put baseballs into orbit.
With nine dingers in 55 games, the Reds infielder projects to around 27 home runs across a full season. However, what fun is running the bases unencumbered?
That’s only the second time in MLB history a player has stolen all three bases in a single plate appearance, and De La Cruz did it in three pitches. He’s literally the fastest man in baseball this year.
The Reds’ infielder is an apex athlete who makes 99.9 percent of his peers look like Little Leaguers. Ohtani is one of the few exceptions.
It’s also entirely possible that the baseball highlight of 2023 won’t occur during an MLB game. We’ll have to see what kind of drama unfolds in the playoffs, yet it’s impossible for an Angels’ pitcher to strike out an Angels’ batter with everything on the line, so I don’t know how to top Ohtani K-ing Mike Trout to win the World Baseball Classic.
Both Ohtani and De La Cruz have hit for the cycle. The former’s feat happened in his second season, while the latter needed a little over two weeks to complete his.
This is a real life version of the Michael Jordan-Mia Hamm commercial, only it’s “Anything you can do, hasn’t been done in the history of the sport.” That’s probably a tad hyperbolic, but it’s closer to being true than not.
Whether it’s a baseball coming off the bat at 119 mph, or out of the arm at around triple digits, the context-destroying highlights that parade across timelines is the fucking best. I have a confession: I lied. This story isn’t about who’s more exciting; I just wanted an excuse to rewatch highlights.
When asked who is the most exciting player in baseball this year: Shohei Ohtani, or Elly De La Cruz? There’s only one answer: “Yes.”