NEWSLETTER
The Los Angeles Dodgers were, are, and will remain the odds-on favorite to land superstar Shohei Ohtani in free agency this offseason. I choose to accept that, and then just hope the Chicago Cubs can pull it off anyway.
I had a similar attitude back in 2017 when Ohtani was first arriving in the United States. I didn’t expect the Cubs to land him among the seven finalists, but I sure had hope. And I was sure surprised when he chose the Angels.
I didn’t remember much else about the other teams’ reactions at the time, outside of pleasantries and general disappointment. Upon review, the Dodgers’ reaction was a touch more than that.
The L.A. Times offered a post-mortem that described at length the efforts the Dodgers undertook to woo Ohtani in 2017, including a three hours presentation with a number of folks involved, including Clayton Kershaw and Justin Turner. The sense you get from reading their reactions? They didn’t feel like they had a fair shot. And they were perturbed.
“‘I felt like it was a waste of my time,’ Turner said.
A few days later, Ohtani made his decision. He was coming to Southern California.
To be an Angel.
‘Just a gigantic waste of time,’ Kershaw said ….
‘He might as well have not been sitting there,’ Turner said, using an expletive for emphasis. ‘We might as well have been speaking to a window.’
At one point, Turner recalled, Ohtani was asked for his true preference: Would he rather hit or pitch? ‘And he said, “Whatever the manager says.” I was like “Come on,”‘ Turner said.
Kershaw sensed a similar disconnect. He felt it was obvious Ohtani had no interest in returning to the outfield, the position he played in his teens. Kershaw blamed (Ohtani’s agent Nez) Balelo for not communicating this.
‘It really just seemed like it was pre-determined that he wanted to DH,’ Kershaw said. ‘I’m kind of mad at his agent for making us waste all that time and effort.'”
As you might expect, Balelo – and, seemingly by proxy Ohtani – didn’t care for the implication that Ohtani was wasting the time of National League clubs.
“From the beginning, Shohei was fully committed to a fair process,” Balelo said, per the L.A. Times back then. “He asked teams for honest information and was honest with the teams. To suggest he would ask any club to meet with him without being open to playing for that club is unfounded and an insult to his personal ethics.”
An *INSULT TO HIS PERSONAL ETHICS!*
HERE’S HOPING OHTANI AND BALELO REMEMBER THAT AND HOLD A GRUDGE!
To be fair, Kershaw also had some kind words for Ohtani in the piece, as did Dodgers manager Dave Roberts. It’s not like they were out-and-out hostile. I just had forgotten how miffed they were that they not only didn’t land Ohtani, but that he chose the other nearby team down the road.
If you were curious, the only comments I could find from the Cubs on not landing Ohtani were those from then-President Theo Epstein, via MLB.com.
“We had plans to try to make him a nitoryu, which is a two-way player, or a samurai with two swords,” Epstein said, referencing the term used for two-way players in Japan. “It was a unique process and a rewarding process. I’m proud of what we did, and I wouldn’t change anything that we did in the process except the result …. I’d like to think we made it a hard choice for him, but in the end, he made the right pick for him, and we certainly wish Ohtani the best for his new team, the Angels.”
The Cubs’ contingent at the time included some who are still around, including Tom Ricketts, Jed Hoyer, Tommy Hottovy, and Kyle Hendricks. Hopefully they, too, said all the right things back in 2017, and can do so again this offseason if they get the chance.
