Exploring Shohei Ohtani’s unprecedented popularity through his Topps Now cards

Shohei Ohtani has dominated the MLB news with his incredible pitching and hitting. Now with his torn UCL, he might need a second Tommy John surgery on his elbow. No more pitching for Ohtani this year. And perhaps no more hitting? We’ll see.

This year, Topps produced an amazing quantity of 25 different Topps Now cards for Ohtani. Nobody comes even close to that many. Bobby Witt, Jr. is the closest with 14, then Anthony Volpe with 12.

Player	Number of Topps Now 2023 cards (as of 8/17/2023)
Shohei Ohtani	25
Bobby Witt Jr.	14
Anthony Volpe	12
Elly De La Cruz	11
Pete Alonso	10
Aaron Judge	10
Ronald Acuña Jr.	9
Miguel Cabrera	9
Freddie Freeman	9
Mookie Betts	8
Masataka Yoshida	8
Julio Rodriguez	8
Jordan Walker	8

Topps Now is a great gauge of a player’s popularity. Every day, Topps takes the top player and team achievements and makes a select number of cards. People pre-order the card for a certain time period. Then sales are closed, and cards are produced according to the number of orders. Topps announces the print run for each card so you can see how popular a certain achievement is by a player.

Shohei’s most popular card is “MLB Doubleheader First: 1st SHO of Career in Game 1, 2 HR Encore in Game 2” with a print run of 33,887 cards. It makes sense this card would be popular. It captures both his pitching and hitting in one card. It almost looks like two different players because of the uniform change between the double-header.

All of Shohei Ohtani’s 2023 Topps Now cards

With so many Ohtani Topps Now cards for Ohtani, you’d think people would start to burn out, and his quantities would drop. Instead, it’s the opposite. Let’s chart his cards over the year.

Date	Card #	Player	Title	Print run
3/31/2023	11	Shohei Ohtani	4th Pitcher in Team History w/ 10-Plus Ks in Opener	4,152
4/2/2023	36	Mike Trout / Shohei Ohtani	Duo Hammers 1st HRs of 2023 Season on Back-to-Back Pitches	4,235
4/3/2023	45	Shohei Ohtani / Ichiro	Japanese Baseball Legends Meet-Up Before Game	4,802
4/11/2023	106	Shohei Ohtani	Sets Angels Record for Runs Allowed Streak	3,484
4/17/2023	140	Masataka Yoshida / Shohei Ohtani	Team Japan Teammates Square Off for First Time in MLB	4,030
4/18/2023	143	Shohei Ohtani / Babe Ruth	Legends Homer at Yankee Stadium 100 Years Apart to the Day	8,336
4/21/2023	161	Shohei Ohtani	Masterful on the Mound w/Seven Scoreless IP & 11 Ks	2,976
4/27/2023	194	Shohei Ohtani	Star Comes Within Feet of One-of-a-Kind Performance	2,660
5/3/2023	233	Shohei Ohtani / Babe Ruth	Joins Legend as Only Other Player with 500-K/100-HR in History	9,034
5/9/2023	262	Shohei Ohtani	Passes Babe Ruth for Most Career Strikeouts by Two-Way Player	8,916
5/15/2023	294	Shohei Ohtani	Superstar Does It All in Historic Four-Hit Game	5,206
6/9/2023	419	Shohei Ohtani	4th Three-Hit Game While Pitching, Most Since 1958	3,258
6/12/2023	433	Shohei Ohtani	Two Homer Nights Saves the Angels in Extras	5,590
6/14/2023	441	Shohei Ohtani	Hardest Oppo. HR in Statcast History	3,668
6/15/2023	445	Shohei Ohtani	First Since 1900 to Lead MLB in HRs and BAA Simultaneously	7,620
6/17/2023	455	Shohei Ohtani	Overtakes MLB Homer Lead with 150th Career Blast	7,279
6/27/2023	505	Shohei Ohtani	6th Ever in Modern Era with 10 Ks, 2 HRs in Single Game	17,031
6/29/2023	511	Shohei Ohtani	14th HR in June Breaks Single-Month Angels Record	4,528
6/30/2023	517	Shohei Ohtani	League-Leading 30th HR Is Longest of MLB Career	7,066
7/8/2023	542	Shohei Ohtani	Joins Ruth & Mays with Historic 1st Half Numbers	5,564
7/17/2023	579	Shohei Ohtani	35th HR Passes 2022 Total and Ties Game with One Flip of the Bat	13,499
7/27/2023	625	Shohei Ohtani	MLB Doubleheader First: 1st SHO of Career in Game 1, 2 HR Encore in Game 2	33,887
8/3/2023	647	Shohei Ohtani	1st MLB Player This Season to Reach 40 HRs	5,468
8/7/2023	672	Shohei Ohtani	Fastest to Reach 40 HRs & 15 SBs in a Season	6,649
8/9/2023	683	Shohei Ohtani	1st Player in MLB History with 40 HRs and 10 Wins	13,445

There are so many numbers to look at in this chart. What happens when we add up all the print runs of Ohtani’s cards? How would that compare to other player’s total print runs?

Topps Now 2023 print run totals for each player

Player name	Number of cards	Total print run of all cards
Shohei Ohtani	25	192,383
Elly De La Cruz	11	141,690
Anthony Volpe	12	72,172
Victor Wembanyama	1	48,654
Jordan Walker	8	37,002
Adley Rutschman	6	30,000
Masataka Yoshida	8	27,423
Gunnar Henderson	6	22,930
Aaron Judge	10	19,456
Julio Rodriguez	8	18,830

The sheer number of Ohtani cards made ensures his print run is the top. But look at #2, Elly De La Cruz. He has half the cards of Ohtani, but his total print run is pretty close. This demonstrates Elly De La Cruz’s popularity this year.

Recently the Angles played the Reds, so Elly met Shohei in the middle of the field for this great video. I like to imagine the dialogue went like this:

Elly: The print run of all my 2023 Topps Now cards is 141,690.
Shohei: Nice! My print run total is 192,383.
Elly: Wow! But I got 11 cards featuring me.
Shohei: 25 for me.

The total sum of all 2023 Topps Now cards printed is 1,116,288. Shohei and Elly together account for 30% of all Topps Now cards produced in 2023.

Final thoughts

This injury is such an important milestone in Ohtani’s 2023 season it makes you wonder if Topps will produce a Topps Now card for it. It sounds silly to make a card about an injury. But this injury truly changes his 2023 season.