Dodgers writer has brutal (but fair) assessment of Shohei Ohtani’s past MVP wins

Last week, Shohei Ohtani won his second National League MVP in as many seasons and his fourth overall. By now, the Los Angeles Dodgers superstar's two-way dominance is something we have come to expect. But Dylan Hernández of the Los Angeles Times offered a sobering reminder: This won't last forever.

"Ohtani will be 32 next summer," Hernández wrote, noting the possibility of Ohtani becoming an outfielder when he can't pitch anymore. "When it’s over, when his days of dominance are behind him, baseball will return to its previous norms, with concerns about work stoppages and declining cultural relevance, and whether certain star players have the necessary qualities to be the faces of the sport."

It’s a brutal assessment because it admits that Ohtani’s greatness is fleeting — that baseball’s brightest era in decades is built around one man’s physical limits. But it’s not unfair, because it’s also true: no single player has ever carried the sport’s global identity this completely.

Hernández's words capture something raw and uncomfortable: baseball's dependence on Ohtani as both a generational talent and a cultural lifeline.

Shohei Ohtani's importance to baseball transcends his MVP awards

For nearly a decade, Ohtani hasn’t merely been the best player in baseball; he’s been the reason baseball mattered beyond its usual boundaries. His MVP seasons and turned baseball into a global event again. In a sport obsessed with nostalgia, Ohtani felt like new life. He made MLB feel modern again — relevant on social media, talked about on non-sports shows, drawing eyes from Japan to Los Angeles. He has been the exception to a long, slow fade in the game’s broader cultural footprint.

Before Ohtani, baseball’s headlines often revolved around labor tensions, pace-of-play debates, and “Is the sport dying?” op-eds. He temporarily silenced all of that. But the brutal part of this assessment is that his brilliance has masked deeper issues — declining youth interest, uneven marketing and a league that has struggled to produce universally magnetic superstars.

Hernández's comment about “whether certain star players have the necessary qualities to be the faces of the sport” cuts deep because it’s true. Most stars, even great ones, don’t have Ohtani’s combination of charisma, humility, cross-cultural resonance and superhuman ability.

When Ohtani’s two-way dominance fades, MLB will go back to being what it’s been for years — a great game, yes, but one fighting for cultural relevance. The awe that comes with watching someone redefine what’s possible will leave with him.

When Ohtani retires or declines, MLB will once again have to confront those problems without its human cheat code to distract from them. So, Hernández's assessment of Ohtani's MVP seasons isn’t mourning his decline — it’s bracing for baseball’s.