Tuesday night wasn’t the first time the Angels let Shohei Ohtani walk in a crucial moment.
Last winter, when Ohtani became a free agent, the team did not make an offer to re-sign the best two-way player the game has seen in the last century. Ohtani, predictably, downplayed the significance of any sentiments aroused by his first game in Anaheim as a visiting player Monday.
Ohtani addressed the matter prior to the Dodgers’ two-game series in Anaheim this week.
“I think other teams, including the Dodgers, evaluated me highly,” Ohtani told reporters in Phoenix, Arizona on Monday. “Rather than think about what the Angels did or didn’t do, I’m grateful for the teams that evaluated me highly.”
Angels manager Ron Washington spent more time explaining his fateful decision to walk Ohtani ahead of Mookie Betts in the 10th inning of Tuesday’s loss than his role in Ohtani walking away in free agency. Still, the timeline of events last winter begs an obvious question.
Washington is regarded as a players’ manager, a mentor many of his pupils, past and present, swear by. It would only make sense for the Angels to leverage Washington’s popularity in their negotiations with free agents last winter after Washington came aboard in Nov. 2023. So why not unleash Washington in talks with Ohtani?
As Fox Sports’ Rowan Kavner reports, that question — however obvious — might not have stirred much internal debate. The Angels didn’t merely decline to match the Dodgers’ deferral-laden offer of a 10-year, $700 million contract. They didn’t even ask their brand-new manager to help persuade the biggest free agent in baseball history to re-sign.
Writes Kavner: “During interviews, [Washington] said the topic of Ohtani staying or leaving ‘never came up.’ He never spoke to Ohtani before the superstar announced his decision in an Instagram post the following month.”
“I certainly wasn’t going to be the one to come here and make that decision,” Washington told Kavner. “So he ended up signing with the Dodgers. I think as a manager, and every manager that’s in baseball, they would love to have him on their team. I would love to have him on this team. It didn’t happen.”
Ohtani might not have needed much arm-twisting from Washington — or anyone. In July, Angels pitcher Tyler Anderson said he thought Ohtani might have been leaning toward re-signing if the Angels had matched the Dodgers’ terms.
The tenuous connection between Ohtani’s departure last December and Washington’s arrival weeks earlier is hardly the manager’s fault. He’s an innocent bystander in the Angels’ failure to retain a generational superstar. As the two men finally crossed paths this week, in opposite dugouts, the story of two ships passing through the night remains remarkable.
