Shohei Ohtani showed us how superstars mark milestones, again! Four weeks ago, it was a walk-off grand slam to mark his joining the 40/40 club, Yesterday, it was a game for the ages as he became the first member of the 50/50 club. More after the jump.

I’ll get to 50/50 in a moment, but let’s just look first at his 6-4-6-10 game, a first (unsurprisingly) for that box score line, and only the seventeenth 6-4-6-x game.

• Ohtani’s six hits included a record five for extra-bases, joining this select group of 15 sluggers, and sharing with Shawn Green the distinction of being the only players with a game of five XBH plus one more knock.
• Ohtani’s ten RBI marked the 16th game with 10 or more ribbies.
• Notably, Shohei’s game is the only one on both the above lists, and he is the only player on either list with a stolen base (or even an attempted steal) in the same game.
• Ohtani’s 17 total bases put him in this group of 7 players. He is the first to reach that total without hitting four home runs. Add in Ohtani’s two stolen bases (and zero CS), and he ties Shawn Green with a record 19 combined “all purpose” bases (i.e. TB + SB – CS).

Here is a visual depiction of the evolution of Power/Speed milestones.

The four seasons depicted are the first at the indicated milestone levels. The height of the bars indicates the instances of the previous milestone represented by the new milestone. Thus, Sam Thompson‘s first 20/20 season was the ninth 15/15 season, Ken Williams‘ 30/30 season was the fifth 20/20 season, Jose Canseco‘s 40/40 season was the sixteenth 30/30 season, and Ohtani’s 50/50 season is the sixth 40/40 season. Those instance counts correlate quite nicely with the gaps between these milestones, with similar instance counts for Williams and Ohtani, and similar seasons (33 for Williams, 36 for Ohtani) since the previous milestone. The significantly larger instance count for Canseco reflects a gap (66 seasons) between milestones about twice as long as the others. Notably, it took 99 years to go from the first 20/20 season to the first 40/40 season. It is a very similar 102 years between Williams and Ohtani, which also represents a doubling of milestones, since Williams’s first 30/30 season was also the first 25/25 season.

That first 20/20 season 135 years ago has grown to number almost 500 now. Here is a breakdown of those seasons on the Power/Speed spectrum.

The totals shown in the above chart are subject to change slightly over the final week of this season. In particular, there could be a few more “red 1’s” in the table should Ohtani reach 55 SB or 55 HR, both within his reach with a strong finish. Further milestones aside, Ohtani’s current 51 stolen bases more than double the previous record total in any 50+ home run season. Ohtani should also set or come close to a number of records for 50+ SB seasons, including:

• Total Bases: Ohtani should easily pass Ronald Acuna Jr.‘s record of 383 in 2023
• SLG: Ditto for the current record .620 clip by Ty Cobb in 1911
• RBI: Ohtani should pass Cobb’s modern era record of 127 in 1911, but the all-time record of 135 by George Davis in 1897 would be a tall order
• SB%: Max Carey‘s 96.2% record (51 for 53) in 1922 is safe, but Ohtani could pass Jacoby Ellsbury (92.9% in 2013) for second place if he can avoid getting caught stealing the rest of the way

To amaze your friends, here is the same chart as above, but showing the first of the seasons represented for each cell of the table (click on the chart to make it bigger).

Ohtani’s 50/50 season is also the first 50/25 season and comes 69 years after the first 50/20 season. That is the largest gap between any two adjacent cells in the table, vertically or horizontally, surpassing the 66 years between the first 35/35 and 40/35 seasons.

None of those 20/20 seasons belongs to Babe Ruth (his stolen base season high was 17, and his failure to reach 20 is mostly because his stolen base success rate was barely 50%, both for his career and in his high SB seasons). That difference aside, the Bambino remains the lone player with a career even remotely resembling Ohtani’s. Here’s how those two careers look seven years in:

I guess if you’re going to be second to someone, Ruth would be the guy. Those Total WAR totals place Ruth T-8th over the first 7 years of a career, with Ohtani ranked 33rd. Here are those lists, for Batting WAR and Pitching WAR in the modern era.