Baseball fans continue to marvel at Shohei Ohtani’s performance in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series.

He hit three home runs and pitched six innings of shutout ball. This left a lot of people wondering and flat out saying it was the greatest postseason effort of all time.

But was it? I discussed that, Ohtani’s overall impact on baseball and the upcoming World Series with my old friend and sports expert Mr. Neil Paine. He runs his own substack.

Was that the best baseball performance ever?

Harry Enten (HE): I looked this up and Ohtani is the first pitcher ever to hit two, let alone three home runs in a postseason game. He is also only the 10th pitcher to go for at least six innings, giving up two hits, no runs and striking out at least 10. Is there anything I’m missing here?

Neil Paine (NP): It’s interesting. Technically, there were probably games in history where someone added more total value with either the bat or the pitching arm than Ohtani did combined last week. For instance, there’s a stat called Run Expectancy Added that tracks how much a batter improved his team’s chances of scoring (or a pitcher reduced the opponent’s chances) – and in that stat, Ohtani graded as a +5.16 between his batting (+3.13) and pitching (2.03). There were 10 playoff games by batters where someone added more value than Ohtani did overall, and 10 playoff games by pitchers where th