Everything is awful. The world is ending. Cats and dogs are living together. Mass hysteria. The West (coast) has fallen. Billions must die.
Shohei “Giving it two ways” Ohtani, announced this morning that he’s going from his original team, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, to a team on the other side of the country, the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles.
As a personal hater of everything Los Angeles (though to be fair, I am a generational hater of many things), this is the worst possible outcome. The Dodgers reached deep into their pockets and couch cushions and found a few hundred million dollars lying around. Well, seven. Seven. Hundred. Million. Dollars. American, so there’s no weird Canuck conversion here.
That’s a whole lotta pocket change. That’s Texas Oil Money levels of pocket change. As in, I fully expect A&M to shell out something similar to reanimate the corpse of John Heisman or something and go 8-5 again.
And honestly, it does genuinely make sense. Ohtani the hitter slashes .274/.366/.566 career with an OPS+ of 148. Slashing, to those who don’t know, is a way of condensely writing a players Batting Average (hits per plate appearance), On Base Percent (hits and walks per plate appearance), and Slugging (how many bases they pick up). OPS+ is a way of measuring a player’s offensive production relative to the rest of the league. 100 is league average, 148 is 48 percent above league average.
As a point of reference, Alex “Healthy Breakfast” Rodriguez slashed .295/.380/.550 for his career, with an OPS+ of 140, and he made 250 million for that in 2000. Inflation adjusted, that’s over 400 million dollars. That’s not even mentioning that Ohtani’s most recent season had him win unanimous MVP slashing .304/.412/.654 with an OPS+ of 184.
Yes, there are a lot of numbers in baseball. I know it’s a nerd sport, go away.
The point is, Ohtani the hitter is almost certainly worth 400 million on his own. Which is genuinely impressive as hell.
The issue is Ohtani isn’t just a hitter. He’s also a pitcher. A really, really good pitcher. Before the man got his ass kicked by Tommy John (again) this year, he was a genuine competitor for this year’s Cy Young Award. He is a career 3.01 ERA pitcher, which is the number of earned runs per nine innings. A competitor? Gerrit Cole, a pitcher worth $250 million to the New York Yankees, and throws for a career 3.17.
Shohei’s something special. He’s an excellent pitcher combined with an excellent batter. Hell, if he played outfield, he’d probably win some Golden Gloves. He could steal your man, your girl, your dog, and honestly, what are you gonna do? If he was just one or the other, he’d be worth an insane amount of money already.
Being both? That’s a goddamned jackpot.
Which is honestly why it hurts even more seeing him go to the Dodgers. The Dodgers are the Yankees of the West Coast. Way too wealthy, far too willing to splurge, and with the recent postseason success of Mickey Mouse. No, I don’t count 2020. Play more than 60 games.
On top of that, for someone who’s incredibly private, and probably one of the most low-key players in a sport already known for a distinct lack of media personalities, the hype around Shohei was genuinely insane. There were people flight-tracking a random guy go to Toronto because they thought it might be Shohei. For a solid chunk of time, people thought Ohtani to the Blue Jays was confirmed, only for the entire state of Canada to get its heart torn out when he decided he liked money more.
At the end of it all, after a stint with the Angels, Ohtani wants postseason success. I can’t blame him. I can’t blame him for getting his bag either, he deserves it. He’s a once in a lifetime player, and I don’t think there’ll be someone like him for a long, long time. I really do look forward to watching him for the next ten years.
But all I’m saying is that, if he wanted postseason success, he shouldn’t have picked a team that got swept in the NLDS. How about them D-backs?
Leave a Reply