Shohei Ohtani has broken a lot of baseball conventional wisdom. He took a new step on Monday night, in Game 3 of the World Series. Ohtani has been on an unholy tear of late, even by his standards. Ohtani hit a game-tying home run to pull the Dodgers even with the Blue Jays at 5–5 in the seventh inning. At that point, the last eight plate appearances Ohtani had taken at Dodger Stadium looked like this: home run, walk, home run, home run, double, home run, double, home run.

So, when Ohtani came up again in the ninth inning, the Blue Jays decided to do something most teams would now consider a relic of the past: They refused to pitch to him. The intentional walk is no longer a significant part of Major League Baseball. Gradually, the quants who solved baseball over the past few decades reali

See Full Page