Watching Shohei Ohtani have the time of his life playing in the 2023 World Baseball Classic, you can’t help but wonder about his future.
You saw him out there at second base in the ninth inning of the semifinal against Mexico, raising his arms and screaming with excitement after hitting the leadoff double, right?
You saw how he celebrated after striking out Mike Trout, who looked like a Double-A hitter up there against Ohtani, with a nasty slider on the outer edge of the plate to close out Japan’s third World Baseball Classic title.
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We all saw it, and it was stunning. This was a different Shohei Ohtani. This was excited Shohei. This was competitive Shohei. This was big-stage Shohei, finally playing games that actually matter, and thriving in the moment.
You think for one second that Ohtani, a free agent after the 2023 season who has not once in his time with the Angels even sniffed the postseason, is not going to chase that feeling the rest of his career?
C’mon.
Ohtani was asked about the ninth-inning display of emotion after the semifinal win.
“It’s been a while since I was playing in a win-or-lose game, a playoff-atmosphere game,” he said, as reported in The Athletic. “Obviously we couldn’t lose and I wanted to get the guys rallied up in the dugout.”
This was Shohei being piece-of-a-bigger-picture Shohei, finally able to be part of a team playing for something, instead of being on a team going nowhere, forced to rely on his inner drive and his inner motivation. He has a .621 on-base percentage in the WBC, with four doubles, a home run, eight RBIs and nine runs scored in six games.
That leadoff at-bat in the ninth inning of the semifinal vs. Mexico’s closer Giovanny Gallegos — the Cardinals’ closer — was the single most important at-bat he’s taken since signing with the Angels before the 2018 season. There’s no other way to look at it.
And he laced a 101-mph frozen rope — off a changeup off the outer edge of the plate — into the right-center gap for a double.
Think of what THIS Shohei could do over a full season.
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Sorry, Angels fans, but this WBC experience officially shuts the door on Ohtani remaining with the only MLB franchise he’s known. And it doesn’t matter if this offseason’s flurry of activity gets the Angels to the point where they might contend for one of the three wild-card spots in 2023. The only thing contention would do is prevent the Angels from trading him. It’ll have no impact on where he plays in 2024 and beyond.
The Angels are nowhere close to being a perennial division-title contender. They’re light years behind the Astros in that realm, and solidly behind the Mariners and Rangers, too. There aren’t enough smoke and mirrors in Southern California to fog his vision.
And that’s what he’ll be looking for, the teams that have proved that they have the organizational structure, motivation and financial commitment to compete for division titles every single year, or at least a roster and farm system that are set up to compete for the next decade. He’s not going to be interested in a franchise that might occasionally, hopefully, compete for a wild-card spot if everything goes right.
He’s gotten the taste of meaningful baseball that’s been missing in the majors. He's going to continue to drink from that cup of intense competition.
The big-budget teams have the advantage in the Ohtani race, sure. But in a world where the Padres — who play in a baseball market that's ahead of only Kansas City, Cincinnati and Milwaukee — can give Xander Bogaerts and Manny Machado contracts guaranteeing $630 million in one offseason, literally any team in baseball could figure out a way to give Ohtani a contract worth $500 million.
And the ones that wouldn’t be willing to offer that are, quite frankly, the ones he wouldn’t be interested in playing for anyway. The Ohtani who has done mind-boggling things in his time with the Angels already is the most marketable baseball player on the planet. And the WBC Ohtani we’ve seen the past couple of weeks, the one showing excitement and genuine joy on the field? It’s an owner’s dream.
Given the option, there are probably at least a dozen teams that would give Ohtani a $450 million contract this offseason, and most of those would go to $500 million. Now, only a couple of those teams would be willing to get into — and win — a bidding war, if that’s what it comes to. But will it?
Most people seem to think so, and that’s why the Mets are seen as the favorite, largely because of owner Steve Cohen’s motivation and his financial might. Whether Ohtani winds up playing there is anyone’s guess, but it seems safe to say the Mets won’t be outbid. I’m not convinced that’s all it’s about, though. The Yankees are seen by the oddsmakers as one of the favorites, too, but remember Ohtani wasn’t too interested in them the first time around.
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The Dodgers make a lot of sense. It’s close by, still on the West Coast, and you know Ohtani’s watched the cross-town team rack up all those division titles. The Cubs are listed as favorites, too, but there’s a lot of up-and-down in that team’s track record. And while “up” is the current trend, it’s still a team that could be a couple of years away, and far from a certainty.
The Cardinals, like the Dodgers, are in the postseason every single year and that doesn’t seem likely to change anytime soon. Will WBC teammate Lars Nootbaar — and watching how much Albert Pujols relished his final year in St. Louis — factor into the decision? St. Louis wouldn’t win a bidding war, but it’s not crazy to think the front office would extend for Ohtani.
The Giants, we saw how much they wanted a “star” this offseason. They’ll still want a “star” next offseason, but they’ll have to prove this season that 2022 was the fluke, not 2021.The Red Sox, Braves, Blue Jays, White Sox, Tigers, Mariners, Rangers, Astros, Phillies and even Diamondbacks would want to be in the conversation, too.
But that’s getting way ahead of ourselves.
Baseball fans watching Ohtani thrive on the WBC stage have felt a little robbed, not getting to see Ohtani in important games during the MLB season and postseason.
That won’t be the case forever.
