Ohtani's Career WAR Ranks 24th Since 2002, Trailing Pujols and Trout
At 56.67 career WAR, Shohei Ohtani sits well behind the era's leaders in pure accumulation, but his sustained two-way workload has no equal among players tracked since 2002.
Published: · Figures as of September 20, 2026
Asked: What else would Shohei Ohtani have to accomplish to be the greatest player in MLB history or has he already cemented that?
Not yet, by career volume — though no one in modern data has done what he's doing
Ohtani has compiled 56.67 career WAR (38.62 batting, 18.05 pitching) across his nine big-league seasons, 2018 through the injury-shortened 2026 he's playing now. Measured against every player with a recorded season since 2002 — which is as far back as this data goes — that ranks 24th of 7,038 players. It's an outstanding total for someone still in his 20s and 30s, but it sits well below the leaders of even that 24-year window: Albert Pujols (92.42), Mike Trout (92.34) and Adrian Beltre (84.27) each needed careers twice as long as his to get there.
| Player | Career WAR (WAR) |
|---|---|
| Pujols | 92.42 |
| Trout | 92.34 |
| Beltre | 84.27 |
| Verlander | 78.76 |
| Betts | 76.88 |
| Scherzer | 76.16 |
| Greinke | 76.13 |
| Kershaw | 75.85 |
| A-Rod | 68.59 |
| Freeman | 67.74 |
| Ohtani | 56.67 |
The honest limit on any "greatest ever" claim: our records only go back to 2002. There's nothing here to measure him against Babe Ruth, Willie Mays, Barry Bonds, Hank Aaron or anyone before that window, so I can't settle the all-time question at all — only where he stands against everyone who's played since 2002.
Where the case is genuinely unmatched: I checked for any other player since 2002 with a real two-way workload in the same season — at least 350 plate appearances and 40 innings pitched. Ohtani is the only one who clears that bar, and he's done it five times (2021, 2022, 2023, 2025, 2026). Nobody else in the data even attempts the combination at that scale, so as a role, his is a category of one in the era we can measure.
Awards support the "how he's regarded" side of the case, which is a different claim from "how good he's been": Rookie of the Year (2018), MVP in 2021 and 2023 (AL, unanimous both times per the record) and MVP again in 2024 and 2025 with the Dodgers — four MVPs in five full healthy seasons, across both leagues. That's a voting record, not a stat, but it's real evidence of how his own era has judged him.
Season-by-season, his combined value has actually been rising with age, not declining — 9.04 WAR in 2021, 9.57 in 2022, 10.05 in 2023, before a step down to 6.50 this year:
| Season | Batting WAR | Pitching WAR | Combined |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 2.74 | — | 2.74 |
| 2019 | 2.45 | — | 2.45 |
| 2020 | -0.14 | -0.45 | -0.59 |
| 2021 | 4.91 | 4.13 | 9.04 |
| 2022 | 3.43 | 6.14 | 9.57 |
| 2023 | 6.04 | 4.01 | 10.05 |
| 2024 | 9.22 | — (no pitching) | 9.22 |
| 2025 | 6.61 | 1.08 | 7.69 |
| 2026 | 3.36 | 3.14 | 6.50 |
What he'd still have to do: keep compiling at anywhere close to his career pace (6.3 WAR/season on average) for another decade-plus to reach the volume of the era's leaders — Pujols and Trout are roughly 35 WAR ahead of him. He's currently on the injured list with left biceps inflammation, reported returning around September 23, so 2026 will close as a shortened two-way season rather than adding to that gap right now. The all-time claim, separately, isn't something this data can ever resolve — that needs a source with pre-2002 career totals, which I don't have.
Confidence: High that he trails the era's career-WAR leaders on pure accumulated value; High that his two-way workload has no equal in any season since 2002; the broader "greatest in MLB history" question is unanswerable from what's in front of me rather than a probability I'd attach a confidence to.