There is living, and there is being alive.
The Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim are finally alive.
Shohei Ohtani, the most talented and impactful baseballing force the sport has ever witnessed, will remain an Angel for at least the next two months. After endless speculation, the two-way dynamo is staying put. The Angels, as evidenced by their recent acquisition of Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez, are buying at the trade deadline, not selling. GM Perry Minasian is withdrawing from his 401(k), speeding off to Vegas in a drop top and putting it all on red. Anaheim is living in the moment.
Come November, Ohtani will reach the open market. Teams will offer a king’s ransom for his services in free agency and he will sign the richest baseball contract of all time. Chances are the Angels will be either outbid or outmaneuvered. Most likely, they will receive nothing but a compensatory draft pick and a whole lot of wonderful memories for employing Shohei Ohtani. Anaheim will enter 2024 with a flawed roster, an aging, oft-injured Mike Trout, a barren farm system and a GOAT-shaped void on both sides of the ball. It is not a rosy outlook.
But the Angels shall cross that horrifying, rickety bridge when they come to it. Concerns about the dark days ahead and the general wellness of the franchise are warranted, yet miss the point. The next five years look dreary. One does not worry about a terminal lung-cancer patient taking one last drag from a Marlboro Red.
The future is tomorrow’s problem.
The Los Angeles Angels going for it for Shohei Ohtani is the RIGHT move
Their decision to retain Ohtani at this crucial juncture, to ignore the fear of losing him for nothing, to recognize that their best shot at retaining him is to win with him, is both commendable and obvious. It is a brave and necessary tact. Any other path would have been cowardice, a direct and embarrassing admission of failure. To “go for it” with Ohtani is fulfilling a moral obligation of sorts to the sporting scales of justice. And most selfishly for neutrals, it is an invigorating and refreshing reprieve from the analytically motivated prudence that informs so much of modern baseball decision making.
To be clear, that the Angels are even in this situation to begin with is a direct repudiation of ownership. Since wooing the MLB-bound Ohtani ahead of the 2018 season, owner Arte Moreno has failed to shepherd his organization to a single postseason appearance. Whether due to a lack of vision, poor roster-building, misguided hires or good old bad luck, Moreno has not delivered. This is a results-based business and he must be judged on his lack of results. The 2018-2023 Angels have been a trust fund baby born with a silver spoon somehow finding ways to fail despite employing two of the best players on earth.
Minasian has done his best since taking charge ahead of the 2021 season, but there’s only so much maneuvering possible. He was tasked with untying a knot that he himself did not weave. That is the situation the Angels found themselves in at this deadline.
So they chose to do, to strive, to dream an irrational, potentially unreachable dream. And almost immediately, their faith was rewarded.
Just hours after the Angels took Ohtani off the open market, the impending AL MVP delivered the performance of a lifetime. In Game 1 of a twinbill against the Tigers, under ruthless July sun, he tossed the first complete-game shutout of his career (a one-hitter no less). In Game 2, he homered twice as the Halos moved to just three games back of Toronto in the AL Wild Card.
Shohei Ohtani drills a home run in Game 2 of the Angels-Tigers doubleheader after throwing a shutout in Game 1
Even by Ohtani’s unreachable standards, it was a remarkable showing. And a valuable reminder why pushing the chips in, why holding firm to a player on pace for over 10 WAR, was the correct move. Ohtani is singular, one of one, an invisible unicorn that is somehow, inexplicably, real. His presence deserves and obliges reverence, respect and all the support in the world.
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And if the Angels fail to reach the October promised land — and they might; they have ground to make up and their August schedule is a gauntlet — at least they tried. Why only now, after years of relative financial trepidation, they are rising above the luxury tax limit and squeezing their farm system dry is a fair question to ask. But at least they did these things eventually.
In an age of transactional conservatism, of calculating five-year plans, the Angels are going full Evel Knievel. They are donning their cape, pointing to the ridge across the canyon, taking a pull of liquid courage, and kicking their motorcycle into gear. They are flying across a treacherous ravine, with little regard for the horrors to come.
Perhaps they land safely on the other side with a pennant held aloft. Maybe an inspired Ohtani opts for the comfort of the known and becomes an Angel for life.
But at this point, that’s not even the point.
The Angels have stared down the end of an era and they have chosen to try and live. They have chosen to feel alive. To hitch their wagon to the strongest horse we’ve ever seen.
May Ohtani carry them.
Jake Mintz, the louder half of @CespedesBBQ is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He played college baseball, poorly at first, then very well, very briefly. Jake lives in New York City where he coaches Little League and rides his bike, sometimes at the same time. Follow him on Twitter at @Jake_Mintz.
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