Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani is interviewed after a 10-8 win over the Chicago Cubs in Los Angeles, on Sept. 11.Ashley Landis/The Associated Press
On Wednesday night, Los Angeles Dodger Shohei Ohtani hit his 47th home run of the year and stole his 48th base. He’s got three weeks to get to 50/50. Once there, he will be the only player to have done it.
It gets better for the Dodgers. Ohtani has spent the season rehabbing from Tommy John surgery. When the season ends, so does his rehab. There is the possibility that the Dodgers will be able to drop Ohtani like a right-handed piano on unprepared opposing lineups in the playoffs.
He couldn’t pitch much, but one or two critical innings can be all you need to turn a World Series. The National League’s best hitter may be about to become baseball’s most terrifying situational reliever. Just the threat of it will unsettle opponents and tantalize fans.
This is what the Toronto Blue Jays missed. It’s a lot more than a standings bump. It’s something they can’t figure out how to buy – excitement.
Now that the season is wrapping up, it’s a good time to revisit what the Jays lost when they got snookered by Ohtani’s people.
I have colleagues who ran up to Pearson Airport on that farcical Friday. They stood there for hours, not sure what exactly they were looking for, before eventually giving up. As it turned out, a nice metaphor for the season that followed.
When Ohtani chose L.A. instead of Toronto, it was still possible to convince yourself this wasn’t a completely bad thing. The Jays had at least shown they were in it to win it. Clearly, they had money. Now it was just a matter of spending it right.
None of those things turned out to be true. The Jays were in it to hack it out and hope for the best. They had no money – at least, none they were willing to spend. What little money they would part with, they spent abysmally.
Instead of giving Ohtani US$70-million a year, they laid out US$29-million to acquire or reacquire Isiah Kiner-Falefa, Kevin Kiermaier and 39-year-old Justin Turner.
Turner was the Ohtani consolation prize. The two men would play the same position – designated hitter.
Led by Turner (until they jettisoned him at the deadline), the Jays DH position has put a cumulative minus 0.5 WAR this year, according to Baseball Reference. Led almost exclusively by Ohtani, the Dodgers DH position has posted a 5.3 WAR.
If you believe that statistics tell the truth, then the Jays didn’t just lose Ohtani back in December. They lost the season.
If they’d acquired him, they’d be a theoretical six games to the better, which means they wouldn’t have given up midsummer, which means people wouldn’t have tuned out the baseball team for the last three or four months of the season.
I’m not sure how you put a dollar figure on that, but whatever it is, it has to be at least the US$41-million difference between what they wanted and what they ended up with.
The reputational cost is even greater.
Until the Ohtani incident, the Jays were every hipster baseball fan’s outsider favourite. They were the team you could get in on early and get some credit for later.
That impression was proved by the way in which people reacted to the (since discredited) news that Ohtani was on the cusp of choosing Toronto – surprised, but not shocked.
If someone had said he was going to Arizona or Cincinnati, that would have provoked snickers. But not Toronto.
Though the Jays aren’t in any better a spot than those two teams, performance-wise, market-wise or ownership-wise, Toronto was a dark horse. You could believe it was capable of a few tricks.
Post-Ohtani, the Jays became a punchline. Nobody involved is going to come out and say the Jays were the stalking horse that pushed the Dodgers up into the fiscal stratosphere, but that is obvious.
Bad enough to lose Ohtani. But to lose him while looking ridiculous was unforgivable.
Pre-Ohtani and working in a civic vacuum, the average Toronto baseball fan was able to feel pretty good about their place in the world. Post-Ohtani, they were forced to start directly comparing the two clubs who’d been in on him at the end.
Like Toronto, the Dodgers have a sweet local TV deal. Like Toronto, the Dodgers put up good numbers in a big, sports-centric city.
That’s where the comparison ends. The Dodgers have a better-run team in a better stadium in a better baseball town. They are in it to win it every year, because they have effective support. The Southern California crowd doesn’t show up for losers (see under L.A. Angels).
Around the turn of the century, the Dodgers missed the playoffs seven years in a row. Despite the fact that they play in the prettiest park in the majors, their attendance cratered.
That sometimes happens in Toronto, too, but in L.A. the message was received and actioned. The Dodgers are about to advance to the post-season for the 16th time in 20 years.
The real effect of Shohei Ohtani on Toronto was multiple. It cost it a shot at this year, and maybe several years down the road. It will probably cost it Bo Bichette and Vladimir Guerrero, Jr. Whatever rebuild there is to come, it started Dec. 8, 2023.
But it also exposed the club to the rest of baseball. However big a game they talk, the Jays are an also-ran. They’re a club that does excuses instead of results.
If Ohtani had snubbed the Yankees the same way, they’d never shut up about it in the Bronx. Revenge would be the theme of every year until they’d made him pay.
In Toronto, it was addressed in tones of embarrassment once and then never spoken of again. When starter Chris Bassitt brought it up again once the year was lost, he was shushed until he took it all back.
It might feel better if Ohtani was in L.A. now putting up regular all-star numbers instead of historic ones. Perhaps that wouldn’t have been worth all that money.
But it wouldn’t change the fact that Ohtani’s snub did something worse than make the Jays a lesser baseball team. It reminded everyone where Toronto stands in baseball’s pecking order – despite all its promise and resources, closer to the bottom than the top.