He completed his two-day stop Saturday before heading to Seattle to take center stage there for Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game. Barring an implausible Freeway World Series or an unfathomable trade in the next three weeks, it’s the last time he’ll play baseball in Los Angeles this year. The next time he shows up could be as a member of the home team.
The Dodgers’ top objective this winter isn’t a secret. Ohtani is scheduled to become the most coveted free agent ever and they want to sign him. Badly. It won’t be the first time.
Ohtani has been a target for the Dodgers since he was a high school star in rural Japan. That was over a decade ago, when Ohtani went by “Otani” and the idea of a player becoming so dominant as a pitcher and hitter at the highest level was a pipe dream.
The franchise’s infatuation spans two ownership groups, two front-office regimes, and two pursuits. Twice the Dodgers were considered the favorites to land Ohtani. Twice the Dodgers failed to persuade Ohtani to join them. He has been the organization’s white whale.
The circumstances surrounding a third chase — if the Angels don’t shock the industry by signing him to an extension before the season ends — will be different.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
For the first time, Ohtani will be a true free agent, unencumbered by restrictions that limited his earning power coming from Japan as an international amateur. For the first time, there won’t be a question about whether he is a pitcher or a hitter or both. For the first time, he’ll be a known quantity.
Ohtani, who turned 29 last week, will undoubtedly earn the richest contract in North American professional sports history. With six major league seasons under his belt, he fully understands the landscape. He probably knows what he wants.
The rest of the baseball world doesn’t have a clue. For now, it’s all speculation. The rumors about his preferences. The conjecture about his leanings. Ohtani has dropped periodic clues, like two years ago when he mentioned winning is a priority, but he is a notoriously private person. He speaks to reporters only after games he pitches. He doesn’t partake in small talk.
But ask around the industry and the Dodgers are the consensus front-runners to sign Ohtani. The reasons are consistent. They have more than enough money. They produce a consistent winner. They play in great weather. He wouldn’t even have to move.
The presentation writes itself.
One rival team executive, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because tampering rules forbid him from discussing prospective free agents on other teams, was willing to bet a sushi dinner on the Dodgers. Three other executives echoed that it’s the Dodgers and then everyone else. Multiple agents, granted anonymity to speak freely, agreed.
“I know we’ll make a huge offer,” one Dodgers player said.
Coming to that conclusion takes a simple analysis of the team’s recent roster moves. Decisions have seemingly been made with Ohtani in mind. Just look at last winter when the Dodgers gave only one-year deals to the free agents they signed.
Notably, they opted to sign J.D. Martinez over Justin Turner to be their designated hitter partly because Martinez was willing to take a one-year deal and Turner sought multiple years. Martinez, as a result, is the designated hitter this season. He has excelled so far, earning a spot in the National League All-Star team’s starting lineup. Ideally for the Dodgers, though, he won’t be their designated hitter next year. Ohtani will be.
On the pitching side, the Dodgers let Tyler Anderson and Andrew Heaney leave to sign multiyear contracts in free agency. Meanwhile, Noah Syndergaard was the only free-agent starting pitcher they signed to a major league deal.
Syndergaard, like Martinez, agreed to a one-year contract. With Clayton Kershaw and Julio Urías hitting free agency this offseason, the Dodgers’ starting rotation for next year is filled with questions. And that was before last week, when Dustin May suffered another elbow injury and was ruled out until next summer. There will be more than enough room for Ohtani in the rotation should they lure him.
The Dodgers have at least $67 million coming off their books after the season, and they could shed more. Ohtani is expected to sign for over $500 million — if not $600 million. He could earn $50 million a season, an increase from the $30 million he’s making this season. The Dodgers can absorb the expenditure. The team is also undoubtedly fawning over Ohtani’s marketing potential — he makes $40 million in endorsements, significantly more than any other baseball player.
But they’re far from the only franchise salivating over the possibility. Clubs from coast to coast will bid for the two-way sensation’s services. He’s doing things on a baseball field nobody has ever done. Babe Ruth doesn’t even compare.
Ohtani might be coming off the single best month a player has ever put together: he batted .394 with 15 home runs, 25 extra-base hits, and a 1.444 OPS while posting a 3.26 ERA with 37 strikeouts in 30 ⅓ innings across five starts on the mound in June. He’s on a path to his second MVP award in three seasons. And yet the Angels remain outside of the playoff picture.
A rash of terrible luck over 24 hours against the San Diego Padres last week further dampened the Angels’ chances of reaching the postseason for the first time since 2014.
On Monday, Trout broke his left wrist and will sit out at least a month. On Tuesday, Anthony Rendon fouled a pitch off his left leg and hasn’t played since. Minutes later, Ohtani left his start because of a blister on his middle finger. It was an injury Ohtani said was a continuation of a cracked fingernail issue that hampered him in his previous start.
The issue prompted Ohtani to announce he won’t pitch in Tuesday’s All-Star game and has spawned speculation about the Angels’ plans before the trade deadline with one central question: Could they really trade Ohtani? The answer is probably not.
Shohei Ohtani arrives for a news conference at the Japanese National Press Center in Tokyo on Nov. 11, 2017. A month later, Ohtani agreed to sign with the Angels.
(Koji Sasahara / Associated Press)
Trading Ohtani would bolster the farm system. His stock has never been higher. The Dodgers tried hard buying early.
The first chance to sign Ohtani arose after the 2012 season when Ohtani was a senior in high school. MLB had just put new limits on teams’ spending for international amateur players. The Dodgers could offer him around only $1 million.
And yet Ohtani remained determined to take the unusual step of going straight to the United States over first playing in Nippon Professional Baseball. He requested NPB teams not draft him.
At that point, the Dodgers were considered the favorites. Their scout in Japan — Keiichi Kojima — was a constant presence at Ohtani’s high school practices. They had the inside track.
The Dodgers and their MLB peers viewed Ohtani as a pitcher. Japanese teams saw a hitter. The Nippon-Ham Fighters, disregarding Ohtani’s request not to draft him, selected him in the first round and offered to let him do both. That was enough and Ohtani stayed in Japan. Otherwise, he probably would’ve signed with the Dodgers.
“I can’t say that for sure,” Ohtani told Times columnist Dylan Hernández in 2017, months before leaving for the major leagues. “But there’s a strong possibility that’s what would have happened.”
The Dodgers got their second chance that winter. By that point, Ohtani had reached A-list celebrity status in Japan for his two-way prowess. He led the Fighters to a championship. He won an MVP award. He was the country’s best player. He sought the next challenge.
MLB rules stipulated an international free agent must wait until age 25 to sign a contract of any length and value. Ohtani was 23 so his options were limited to what teams had remaining in their international bonus pools. No team could offer him more than a $3.5 million signing bonus. He chose to leave for the major leagues anyway. Last summer, he revealed the impetus for the decision was he thought it would increase his chances to make the Hall of Fame.
The Dodgers could offer Ohtani only $300,000. That didn’t stop them from trying. A contingent representing the organization met with Ohtani in Beverly Hills as part of the recruiting process. The group included Clayton Kershaw, Justin Turner and Dave Roberts.
“We did everything we could to get him,” Roberts said.
There was one, unsolvable problem: The designated hitter wasn’t added to the National League yet. The Dodgers, according to people with knowledge of the situation, were willing to give Ohtani the chance to pitch and hit. But he wouldn’t play every day without the DH.
The Dodgers’ plan for Ohtani included putting him in a six-man starting rotation and giving him 300 to 400 plate appearances per season. Ohtani would be available to pinch-hit on rest days after pitching and play a corner outfield position on the other days he wasn’t on the mound.
“He wanted to DH,” Roberts said. “That was the non-negotiable. We didn’t have the DH.”
In the end, Ohtani’s decision was a stunner. The Angels, without a playoff win in nearly a decade, weren’t considered a strong possibility. But Ohtani chose to join Trout in Anaheim for $2.315 million.
He quickly became the biggest bargain in sports, earning less than $15 million in salary over his first five seasons while winning AL MVP in 2021, making two All-Star teams, and smashing the ceiling for what’s possible from a baseball player.
This season, he was voted to the AL All-Star team as both a designated hitter and pitcher for the third straight year. He’s better than he has ever been. He’s maybe better than anybody has ever been. The Dodgers are waiting.