As long as Shohei Ohtani stays healthy, the National League MVP award likely is on lockdown — although it’s also possible that voter fatigue could emerge. So could Paul Skenes with 20 wins and something ridiculous like a 1.80 ERA.

Still, Ohtani remains the greatest athlete in the world and the greatest baseball player of all-time. He is Mario Lemieux in his prime, but only if Lemieux had played goalie for half the games.

On the mound, Ohtani has a 0.97 earned-run average. At the plate, despite a slow start, he is on pace for nearly 30 home runs and likely will wind up in the 40s.

So even if Skenes has another historic season and wins another Cy Young Award, he is a full-time pitcher, and that means he could have a difficult time winning MVP.

Playoff games? Those are a different matter, and Skenes alluded to them after his latest masterpiece Tuesday night — an eight-inning, two-hit shutout of the Colorado Rockies. He lowered his season ERA to 1.98 and his career ERA to an astounding 1.97.

One could make the argument that he is the greatest young pitcher in baseball history (he’s still only 23!).

Skenes was asked about getting pulled after the eighth inning again. He said manager Don Kelly is just looking out for him and that “it’s a long season.”

“It’s start nine, I think, out of 32 or 33,” Skenes said, “and hopefully eight or nine more after that.”

It’s not an unrealistic thought. One might even argue that the Pirates have a better chance to reach the World Series than to make the playoffs, if that makes sense. This Skenes-led rotation, combined with a radically improved offense, would be a major problem for anybody, including the Dodgers.

Here’s the potential issue: Even though they’re on an 89-win pace, the Pirates are in fourth place in the NL Central and a game behind Ohtani’s Dodgers for the last wild-card spot. That kind of win total should get them in, but the 89-win Diamondbacks missed the playoffs just two years ago.

Meantime, Skenes has literally become unhittable. He also hasn’t walked a batter in a month. In his past eight starts he has a 1.09 ERA with 55 strikeouts and five walks.

This is crazy, unheard-of stuff we are witnessing. It feels like Skenes could throw a perfect game any time he takes the mound. Every start has become a major event.

The biggest starts of his career, however, lay ahead. And there is one the entire baseball world dreams of, perhaps in the deciding game of an early series or maybe Game 7 of the NL Championship Series:

Skenes vs. Ohtani.