In the end, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Shohei Ohtani were inventible.
But what's next?
And you thought the Grand Theft Auto VI reveal trailer was pulling in big numbers? Oh buddy.
On Saturday, the story that has both captivated and frustrated baseball fans finally reached its conclusion.
Where would Shohei Ohtani, the two-time American League MVP and perhaps the most singularly talented player the sport has ever seen, go next?
An hour north, that’s where.
After six seasons, Ohtani has left the Los Angeles Angels, signing a ten year, $700 million dollar contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers (per the statement he released on Instagram and later corroborated by various sources with salary details).
$700 million.
It is the largest contract in baseball history.
Per ESPN’s Jeff Passan, there are some deferrals built into the deal meaning, in the simplest of terms, that Ohtani’s addition won’t become an immediate financial albatross and the Dodgers will have enough leeway to remain competitive, able to continue building around a roster that already boosts a wealth of All-Star talent.
Surprising? I mean… no, not really. C’mon now, let’s not kid ourselves here.
Ever since the questions about Ohtani’s free agency began really gaining steam over the past year, the Dodgers were the unspoken frontrunners, the easy choice.
Just up the highway from where he has already been established in Orange County, a better competitive fit (especially in contrast to the Angels, who seem destined to languish in mediocrity for perpetuity under Arte Moreno) and the outside-baseball opportunities inherently available by being a sports superstar in Hollywood (as the great Molly Knight of
highlighted in her column, Ohtani is more-or-less, “his own economy”).So while the GTA at large worked themselves into a frenzy over the weekend, supported on the belief that the Blue Jays were deep in the mix, it ultimately, ‘twas not to be.
Now, putting on my Jays fan hat for a minute, would it have been unbelievably cool to have Ohtani hitting dingers into the Dome’s upper deck and throwing heat on the mound for the next decade? Of course!
There is nobody quite like him in baseball, really, in all of modern sports. What more is there to say?
Every time I wrote about him over the past season, it came with the caveat that it would probably be outdated before the digital ink even had a chance to dry.
He does what he does at a historic rate, pitching and hitting, both, at an elite level. A Cy Young-worthy player on the mound, while being one of the best hitters in the game too.
That is the 700-million-dollar question though. What should be expected, realistically, of Ohtani going forward?
Because once you separate yourself from the hype, just a little?
Things get murky.
Two things can be true at once.
On one hand, Ohtani has just authored what is the most dominant three-year stretch of individual baseball the sport has seen since Barry Bonds.
On the other, you have to wonder if it included his peak too.
He’ll turn 30 in July, traditionally the age in North American sports where questions about “remaining prime years” start getting asked - but even then, with Ohtani, those questions will come with an addendum. He won’t pitch whatsoever in 2024, as he recovers from elbow surgery (which follows his Tommy John procedure in 2019: additionally, an oblique injury prematurely ended his season after he ceased pitching in August).
He has played in the outfield before, albeit briefly with the Angels in 2021 and during his time in Japan before he came to MLB but presumably, he will operate exclusively as the Dodgers DH for the time being (on the understanding that it won’t be disruptive to his rehab program).
As transcendent as Ohtani might be, I don’t care who you are - that’s a lotta money to be paying a guy to play on just one side of the ball.
To be fair, with a vastly more balanced roster surrounding him in Dodger Stadium, he’ll have more breathing room than he ever did in Anaheim, even if he’s not back pitching until 2025, at the earliest.
Yet in committing to him for a decade, the Dodgers, clearly, are expecting someone resembling the player who has bent the American League to his will for the last three years - at least for a substantial portion of the deal.
And honestly? I don’t think they’ll get that. Not quite.
Instead, I suspect they’ll get flashes of brilliance but not the sustained history book rewriting that we’ve become accustomed too. In his early-to-mid thirties, having dealt with major injuries, it goes against too much realism, too much general thinking.
If anyone can disprove that, of course, it is Ohtani and these are words I’ll gladly (if somewhat reluctantly eat) if the Dodgers can, with this signing, succeed in their obvious goal (if not winning one championship within the next few years, then several).
But it is, ultimately, deferred money and strong pre-existing foundation be dammed, a gamble. A big one.
LA’s core, led by Freddie Freeman (34) and Mookie Betts (31) are now, while still terrific players, fighting against that age-related wisdom themselves. Adding another player, who won’t be at his very best for a least a year, who is also on that curve? Again, there’s no other way to slice it - it’s risky.
Maybe though, pessimism to the wind, it doesn’t matter.
I’ve been thinking, since the news of Ohtani’s signing broke, about a quote from Moneyball.
Oakland A’s GM Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is meeting with Red Sox owner John W. Henry (Arliss Howard), who wants to bring Beane to Boston and commends him on his organization’s then-innovative strategy of using sabermetrics to identify talent.
“But the first guy through the wall. He always gets bloody. Always.”
Ohtani isn’t the first to be a two-way player.
But taking a look back on baseball history, it became apparent pretty early on that the sheer physical toil, the absolute focus, the strain, it was too much to expect that one person would be able to both pitch and hit successfully for any sustained period.
Babe Ruth, for a time, was the most prominent exception.
For the first few years of his career in Boston, he both hit and pitched. But the game was different then. In the thick of Deadball, where the hit-and-run was king, home runs were a rarity and MLB was, to great frustration, a whites-only operation. Ruth’s most effective season, in that respect, was a singular one: 1919.
He pitched 133 innings to the tune of a 2.97 ERA and led all of baseball with 29 homers. It was incredible. But that was it. He would pitch again, sporadically over the years but once he became an everyday player with the New York Yankees the following season, he would instead make his legend as best hitter baseball had ever known.
That was over a century ago.
It is then, what makes Ohtani so singularly unique. Pittsburgh Pirates prospect Bubba Chandler made some minor waves recently, attempting to be both a shortstop and a starting pitcher, before deciding to commit his focus entirely to the mound.
Others will follow, there is no doubt. Until then however, there is only Ohtani.
He can strike out ten and hit two homers in the same breath. A complete game shoutout in one half of a doubleheader, promptly followed by a pair of bombs in the next.
Speed on the basepaths, a terrific pitcher, a tremendously powerful hitter, a trailblazer in his play-style, proving nothing is impossible.
Sure, you can get bogged down in the particulars, the what-ifs, the what-could-bes… but you can’t top this.
So even if you can’t stand the Dodgers, the big-money men, I get it. I do. But take a step back and try to appreciate it.
After all - even off the mound? For however long it lasts. He’s history in motion.