There’s a notion being advanced that the Baltimore Orioles should go all in on the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes.
How about a big fat no, they shouldn’t.
“Acquiring Ohtani would solve two of the Orioles’ biggest issues – they need an ace, and they need more home run power – and make Camden Yards the center of the baseball universe, all in one fell swoop. In a wide-open AL, the O’s with Ohtani would have as good of a chance as any team to reach the World Series,” Thomas Harrigan wrote in an article on Ohtani posted on Wednesday on MLB.com.
The problem with what Harrigan, among others, is proposing, comes in that last sentence there.
“(T)he O’s with Ohtani would have as good a chance as any team to win a World Series.”
What Harrigan is saying here is, Orioles GM Mike Elias should roll the dice on the Los Angeles Angels superstar to “have as good a chance as any team to win a World Series,” when right now, without Ohtani, the O’s already have as good a chance as any team to win the World Series.
Baltimore, at this writing, is tied atop the AL East with Tampa Bay, finally catching the Rays, who’d gotten out to 13-0 and 28-7 starts this season, but have been playing .500 baseball since May 7, and have now lost four straight, ahead of the start of a huge four-game series at Tropicana Field that begins on Thursday.
At 58-37, the O’s, at the moment, have the best record in the American League and the second-best record in MLB.
Now, yes, Elias and every other GM who thinks his team has as good a chance as any team to win the World Series will be trying, over the next couple of weeks, to get better, and the O’s needs are what Harrigan laid out – a starter and a bat.
And Elias happens to have MLB’s best farm system full of top prospects that he can use as bargaining chips to try to address those needs.
The issue here regarding Ohtani is signability.
Ohtani is in the last year of his contract, and the thinking is that he is looking, long term, to sign with a team located on the West Coast, which makes sense, given that the West Coast is as close to his native Japan as he can get and still be in MLB.
There are several potential suitors on the West Coast – Seattle, for example, where Ohtani has been making his offseason home the past couple of years; San Francisco; the Los Angeles Dodgers; the San Diego Padres.
The Dodgers, whose farm system ranked second in the MLB Pipeline preseason rankings going into 2023, could be a big player for Ohtani at the trade deadline, and the need there in Chavez Ravine is more obvious than it is in Charm City – the Dodgers have an entire top-tier starting rotation on the IL right now, so they’d be looking at Ohtani more to be a staff ace, and the 35 homers would just be an added bonus.
But LA could also be thinking long term; basically, we’re probably the most attractive potential long-term landing spot for him as it is, so why should we give up a package of prospects and young MLB guys to get a guy we can just get for nothing other than the $500 million we’d have to commit in free agency?
On the O’s side of this, then, if you’re thinking that Ohtani isn’t an option for the long haul, why give up a package of prospects and young MLB guys for a guy who is a short-term rental, in a sport where the postseason is eternally unpredictable?
Which isn’t to say that Elias shouldn’t put some sort of bid in to the Angels just to get on the radar as the next two weeks play out, but what he puts out in terms of a bid should be almost ridiculously low, essentially just enough to get it on the record that there’s interest there.
The only way Elias should swing a deal is if the Angels find that they’re not getting any serious takers out there because of the assumptions about Ohtani’s future interests, and Angels GM Perry Minasian decides that he wants to get something more than just the draft compensation pick should Ohtani walk after the season.
Otherwise, there are other starters and bats that can be had for less than a premium asking price, and worst-case, the Orioles stay as is, which at the moment, anyway, ain’t all that bad, considering.
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Chris Graham
