Gerrit Cole and Aaron Judge impressed by Shohei Ohtani’s two-way fame

Gerrit Cole is probably the best pitcher in baseball and Aaron Judge the best hitter. But like the rest of us, they both marvel at two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, who is probably a top-five hitter and top-five pitcher. But while both Cole and Judge were great two-way players in high school, only one of them even wonders if he could have tried to do both at the major league level.

“I would like to be a rising child. What an inspiration to people who strive to do so,” said Cole, an admirer of Ohtani from the start. “At the end of high school, I was throwing at 100 mph. I loved hitting. I loved playing on the field. But it was, you’ll never do that again. You throw too hard. … Ohtani inspires people to say now, hey, it’s possible in the major leagues.

Cole seemed to have some regret that the bat was taken out of his hands until he became a pirate, when he was a decent hitter (for a pitcher) with three homers and a .174 ERA. Could he have been a two-way player?

“I like to think I would be Ohtani,” Cole said with a laugh (he was joking).

So I asked him to be serious.

“I don’t know,” he said. “I stopped working on hitting after high school. I have confidence in my abilities. I won’t make any silly remarks. I don’t think I would have made the major leagues as a hitter.

A majority of scouts first projected Judge would be a pitcher since he’s 6-foot-7 and pitched in the mid-’90s. But he said he tried to do both at the college, and if he kept trying, “I think I’d end up where I am now — just punching.”

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Judge has always seen knocking as his ticket to the big boys.

“It pissed me off a little when I got out of high school. Really a lot of teams liked me more as a pitcher than a hitter. I was kind of offended by that,” Judge said. “I said I wasn’t going to pitch in the major leagues. I’d rather hit home runs than give up home runs. I don’t think my arm would have lasted. These guys pitch 200 innings in a year. It’s a gift there.

Since there was a Judge vs. Ohtani theme this week, I asked Judge how he would arguably rank the top three players in the game, including Mike Trout.

“I have Trout and Ohtani above me. Ohtani does both throw and hit, and Mike Trout wins an MVP every two years. I have work to do.