3 Angels who deserve the most blame for Shohei Ohtani jumping ship, joining Dodgers

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Shohei Ohtani has officially departed the Los Angeles Angels organization and will join their crosstown rivals, the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ohtani joins a loaded Dodgers team eyeing the first postseason appearance of his career.

The Angels will try and rebound from this, but that's easier said than done. This team didn't make the postseason a single time with him in the six years he was here. He took home two MVP awards in the last three seasons, and the team never won more than 77 games in those seasons. Just astonishing stuff.

The $700 million obviously played a role in Ohtani signing with the Dodgers, but the fact that Ohtani knows he's going to join a contender was what made the Dodgers the favorites all along.

With Ohtani now gone, we can blame some Angels who are most responsible for this transpiring.

3) Anthony Rendon

Anthony Rendon was signed to a mega-deal to join the Angels after he helped lead the Washington Nationals to a World Series victory in 2019. Rendon had established himself as one of, if not the best third baseman in baseball, and Billy Eppler paid him like it.

Rendon had a solid first season with the Angels in the shortened 2020 season, but everything since then has been an utter disaster.

Rendon has not played more than 58 games in any of his four seasons with the Angels. He has not topped the 50 game mark in each of the last two years. He's dealt with season-ending injuries in each of the last three years. No, injuries are not completely his fault, but the Angels are not paying him the money he's owed for him to appear in less than one third of their games.

In the rare times Rendon has actually played, he has been a subpar hitter. Sure, he's gotten on base and done well in the clutch, but Rendon has a 94 OPS+ since the start of 2021. He has objectively been below-average, which is something the Angels could've never expected this quickly.

Rendon being as much of a disappointment as he has been not only forced them to dip into their non-existent depth, but the Angels were unable to make many moves with Rendon handcuffing them financially. It's very hard to win when your most expensive player doesn't do anything positive. That's the situation the Angels were in with Rendon while Ohtani was here.