The big news out of the baseball world on Thursday is that Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge are unanimous MVP winners for the 2024 MLB season.

Well, duh. Here's hoping everyone enjoyed their work, because the likes of it will probably never be seen again.

Ohtani winning the National League MVP and Judge winning the American League MVP is about as surprising as the sun and moon changing places every 24 hours. Frankly, MLB Network's hour-long reveal special could have been condensed into two seconds.

Though it was his first in the NL for the Los Angeles Dodgers, Ohtani now has three MVPs. That puts him in a club with only 11 other players, though he is the only one (h/t Sarah Langs of MLB.com) to win each of his three by unanimous votes.

Judge, meanwhile, now has two MVPs and can count himself as one of seven players to win multiple MVPs as a New York Yankee.

Though neither lived up to his billing in the playoffs, this moment is nothing if not an exclamation point for Ohtani and Judge. And in all likelihood, the 2024 season will go down as arguably the finest hour either slugger ever had.

MLB Has Never Had an MVP Duo Like This One

Remember when Ohtani and Judge went head-to-head in the 2022 AL MVP race?

Though Judge won with 28 out of 30 first-place votes, even his AL-record-setting 62 home runs didn't paper over Ohtani's case completely. Rightfully so, as he was a top-five hitter and pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels that year.

Compared to 2024, though, the '22 season looks like a warm-up act for Ohtani and Judge.

Forced to take a break from pitching by way of a second major elbow operation, Ohtani set a career-high with a 190 OPS+ and, oh yeah, chartered MLB's 50-50 Club with 54 home runs and 59 stolen bases.

For his part, Judge came two homers short of becoming the third hitter to post multiple 60-homer seasons. And this time, he posted career bests with a .322 average, a .458 OBP, a .701 slugging percentage and a 1.159 OPS.

At his hottest, Judge had a 100-game span in which he had a 1.344 OPS and 45 home runs. The only other player to hit those marks within a single season: Barry Bonds in 2001.

Don't say "Holy smokes" just yet, because it gets better. When you combine key stats for Ohtani and Judge, here's where they rank among MVP duos since the modern version of the award was born in 1931:

• 194 Extra-Base Hits: 2nd
• 803 Total Bases: 2nd
• 112 Home Runs: 1st
• 20.0 rWAR: 2nd

This is not counting 1979, when Willie Stargell and Keith Hernandez shared the NL award and made it an MVP trio with AL winner Don Baylor.

Otherwise, you have to hand it to Jimmie Foxx and Chuck Klein for combining for 203 extra-base hits and 858 total bases in 1932. And likewise to Stan Musial and Lou Boudreau for posting 21.7 total rWAR in 1948.

As for what comes next for Ohtani and Judge, well, that's a nice parade you've got there. It would be a shame if someone rained on it.

What's Next for Ohtani?

As a general rule, doubting Shohei Ohtani is dangerous.

It's because of him, after all, that we know it is possible for one person to be an elite hitter and an elite pitcher. And, of course, to top 50 homers and 50 steals in a season. Anyone who dared to proclaim as such before he came from Japan in 2017 probably would have tried as a heretic.

It is nonetheless plausible that 2024 will be Ohtani's high point as a sheer offensive force, if for no other reason than he likely won't ever go 50-50 again. History says as much, as hitters are now just 1-for-95,387 in making such seasons happen.

With his return to pitching due up in 2025, it's also worth remembering that Ohtani's two-way act functioned as a sort of tax on his offensive output between 2021 and 2023:

• Games in Which He Didn't Pitch: .972 OPS, 12.3 AB/HR
• Games in Which He Did Pitch: .914 OPS, 19.9 AB/HR

Granted, the Dodgers will live with Ohtani being a less effective hitter if he still has the goods to dominate from the mound. And he will do so if his fastball still touches triple digits and his splitter and sweeper are filth-tastic.

But does anyone want to bank on it?

We know that Ohtani has had one Tommy John surgery. And while we knew frustratingly little at first, we learned via his surgeon in March that his second elbow surgery was part-Tommy John, part-internal brace procedure.

Those who would be optimistic about Ohtani's pitching future after these surgeries don't have much to lean on. There aren't many success stories among pitchers who've had Tommy John multiple times. For pitchers who've had Tommy John and internal brace procedures, there's basically only Rich Hill and Drew Rasmussen to consider.

Oh, and the Dodgers? They're not great at keeping pitchers healthy.

Ohtani obviously won't be out of work if his return to pitching doesn't pan out. The surgery he had to repair a torn labrum in his left shoulder after the World Series doesn't set off loud alarms. It is neither his throwing shoulder nor his lead shoulder in the batter's box.

Even still, you can probably rule out Ohtani ever stealing 50 bases again. He will enter his age-30 season in 2025, putting him in territory where 50-steal seasons have been exceedingly uncommon (i.e., twice since 2001) in the 21st century.

Otherwise, Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported in May that Ohtani would "likely be amenable" if the Dodgers asked him to give up pitching to be an outfielder. If that comes to pass, he'll have a whole new reason to spare his legs undue effort.

What's Next for Judge?

As for Judge, well, what is there to worry about?

He just became only the second hitter since 1957 to top a 220 OPS+ in a season, and his Baseball Savant page looks like somebody spilled red paint all over it.

Still, Judge is a 6'7", 282-pounder who will turn 33 on April 26, 2025, and who may or may not be needed back in center field.

Where Judge plays going forward hinges on whether the Yankees re-sign Juan Soto. If they don't, right field will be open. If they do, it's notable that the Yankees preferred Judge in center even after they called up Jasson Domínguez late in 2024.

If the Yankees continue to use Judge in center, they wouldn't be the first team to use a 33-year-old as a regular out there. But in recent times, precedents for that kind of behavior include guys like Kevin Kiermaier, Brett Gardner, Lorenzo Cain, Denard Span, Ángel Pagán and Coco Crisp.

None of them was as big as Judge, whose size may be destined to become a problem no matter what.

He's at an age where most hitters are either already burning out or are in danger of doing so. And for bigger hitters, the risk is greater. Upon tallying all the Runs Created ever produced, I found that hitters of 250 pounds or more compiled a larger percentage (87 percent) through the age of 32 than hitters under 250 pounds (84 percent).

And this is just a general picture. Judge really is a special case, as he's one of only three hitters of at least 6'5" and 250 pounds to have had a notable career in MLB.

The others are Adam Dunn and Frank Howard, and neither offers a compelling reason to believe Judge has a long runway of good seasons still ahead of him. Both were still pretty good at 33 and then a cliff came for each soon after.

It's hard to imagine Judge's own cliff arriving so soon after he did [waves hands] that in 2024, but bear in mind that cliffs sneak up on hitters all the time.

Heck, it was just two years ago that Paul Goldschmidt and Nolan Arenado finished first and third in the NL MVP voting. Now, the former is a middle-tier free agent and the latter is a salary-dump trade candidate.

All this said, please don't mistake the takeaway here for a dire warning that Ohtani and Judge are doomed to fail in 2025 and forever afterward. This has been an attempt to ponder their mortality, not to dig their graves.

Even more so, this is a plea not to take what Ohtani and Judge did in 2024 for granted. Their individual and collective feats were extraordinary in every known sense of the word.

A couple of MVP awards are the least that they deserve. What they really earned is the right to have their 2024 seasons remembered forever.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.