Ted Williams
Shohei Ohtani
Stat by stat
Bars are scaled to the leader in this list.
The verdict
Ted Williams leads 2 of 2 categories. Our all-time ranking places Ted Williams at #5 and Shohei Ohtani at #12.
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The case for Ted Williams
The purest hitter in history by nearly any rate measure. Williams's career .482 on-base percentage is the all-time record, his 1.116 OPS trails only Ruth, and his .344 average came with 521 home runs — power and discipline fused as no one has fused them since. He hit .406 in 1941, the last .400 season, famously refusing to sit on the final day and going 6-for-8 in a doubleheader to finish there. He won two Triple Crowns (1942, 1947) and somehow lost the MVP vote both times. The counterfactual defines him: he missed all of 1943-45 training as a naval aviator during World War II and most of 1952-53 flying combat missions as a Marine pilot in Korea, costing him roughly five prime years. Conservative projections put his career at 650-plus homers and near 3,300 hits. He hit .388 at age 38 and homered in his final at-bat in 1960.
The case for Shohei Ohtani
The only player on this list still adding to his case, and the only one doing something Ruth abandoned in 1919: genuine two-way play at an MVP level. Through 2025 Ohtani has four MVP awards — every one unanimous — in five seasons, a feat matched by no one; 280 career home runs alongside 38-plus wins and 650-plus strikeouts as a pitcher; and the first 50-50 season in history in 2024, finishing 54 homers and 59 steals and clinching the milestone with a 6-for-6, three-homer game. His 2023 WBC ending — striking out Mike Trout, his Angels teammate, to seal Japan's title — and his 2025 postseason game against Milwaukee, ten strikeouts as the starting pitcher and three home runs as the leadoff hitter in the same night, are already mythology. His 700-million-dollar Dodgers contract reset sports economics. Ranked twelfth on accumulated value; no active player is more likely to climb.