Shohei Ohtani singled in the fifth inning Friday against the Texas Rangers to extend his on-base streak to 44 games, breaking Ichiro Suzuki’s record for the longest such run by a Japanese-born player.
The streak is the longest active run in Major League Baseball and puts Ohtani more than halfway to Ted Williams’ all-time mark of 84 games, set in 1949. He was still 14 games short of the Dodgers record of 58 held by Duke Snider.
The streak began Aug. 23, 2025, when Ohtani went 0-for-4 against the San Diego Padres. Since then, he has reached base in every game, carrying the line through a season in which he has also been one of the sport’s best pitchers.
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Ohtani entered Friday as the MLB leader in ERA among qualified pitchers and had not allowed an earned run in 12 innings across two starts. He was scheduled to lose qualified eligibility on Saturday, leaving him vulnerable to being passed in the title race even as he could reclaim it with his next start next week.
The Dodgers started the 2026 season as defending champions, and Ohtani’s streak has run through the months in between while the club won a second straight World Series title. That gives Friday’s hit a place beyond one box score: it is another marker of how quickly Ohtani has pushed toward records that once looked out of reach.
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What remains is not whether he belongs in the conversation with the game's longest streaks, but how long he can keep turning routine at-bats into history before the numbers finally catch him.
