One wild stat showed just how special Shohei Ohtani's strikeout of Mike Trout truly was

Tuesday’s final of the World Baseball Classic came down to a matchup that was straight out of a movie script. It was a one-run game with two outs, and two of the greatest talents to ever play baseball — who also happen to be MLB teammates — were facing each other with a championship on the line.

Shohei Ohtani vs. Mike Trout. How could it get any better than that?

Well, Ohtani found a way.

We’ve heard plenty about Trout’s legendary career, especially written here at For The Win. Despite playing for the lowly Angels, Trout is statistically one of the best players in baseball history. But Ohtani is a true generational unicorn — an elite two-way player not seen since the Babe Ruth era — and he managed to strike out his Angels teammate in a way that few pitchers have ever managed to pull off.

If you aren't impressed, you should be. Mike Trout has had 3 swinging strikes in only 24 of his 6,174 career MLB plate appearances!pic.twitter.com/VTlcRnAgPH

— Codify (@CodifyBaseball) March 22, 2023

Ohtani struck out Trout in an at-bat that had three swinging strikes. In Trout’s entire big-league career, he’s only had 24 such at-bats (a strikeout with three swinging strikes in the plate appearance) out of 6,174 plate appearances. And Ohtani managed to do that in the first time they had ever faced each other.

That’s just an incredible stat that speaks to Ohtani’s greatness — along with Trout’s.

MLB fans were justifiably impressed by that fact.