Yankees-Dodgers World Series reminds Angels fans of Shohei Ohtani trade botch

MLB pundits have rightfully illuminated how asinine it was that the Angels let Shohei Ohtani leave in free agency without receiving anything back. As the Red Sox did with Mookie Betts, for example, smart franchises cash in chips when they are sure that they cannot reach long-term deals with their star players. The Angels failed to do so, and are now relegated to watching Ohtani shine on baseball's biggest stage while they lick their wounds following their worst season ever.

Jon Heyman of the New York Post detailed who exactly the Angels could have acquired in an Ohtani trade. Instead of acquiring any of these valuable, up-and-coming prospects, the Angels attempted to go all-in to build a winner around Ohtani and Mike Trout in order to make the playoffs for the first time since 2014. They tried and failed to alleviate their current standing as the laughing stock of the league, and now stand alone as the team with the longest playoff drought in baseball.

"The Yankees were considered then to have a decent group of young players — led by Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells, and also including Oswald Peraza, Oswaldo Cabrera, Trey Sweeney, Luis Gil and Hayden Wesneski — and the Dodgers always have prospects — their group included Miguel Vargas, Bobby Miller, Dalton Rushing, Dustin May and Gavin Lux back then. Ultimately though, the Padres likely were in the best position to get Ohtani in trade with all the young guys they instead traded for Juan Soto to offer (James Wood, Mackenzie Gore, C.J. Abrams, etc.) plus they had Jackson Merrill. Word is, the Padres would have been willing to offer even more for Ohtani than Soto."

Heyman

Cool. Sick. Awesome. Angels fans have to be glad that their team opted to bring in Hunter Renfroe, Aaron Loup, Ryan Tepera, Lucas Giolito, Mike Moustakas, C.J. Cron, Randal Grichuk, and all the other unsuccessful win-now players over the years, instead of rebuilding and thus acquiring any of these guys. The Yankees and Dodgers are playing in the World Series with many of those players on their active roster, with the Dodgers obviously rostering Ohtani who they freely signed in free agency. The Nationals rebuild is looking fantastic now that they have Abrams, Gore, and Wood, and should compete for a NL East title in a couple years when those young stars hit their prime. If the Ohtani trade could have netted the Angels more than the Nationals got for Soto, they maybe could have acquired Jackson Merrill alongside Abrams, Gore, and Wood. Merrill will finish in the top three of NL ROY voting this year.

Now, Heyman's messaging is intentionally vague. He is not reporting that these were the specific offers that Perry Minasian turned down. However, an Ohtani trade package would have entailed the Yankees, Dodgers, and Padres offering a large amount of their top prospects, and those are the names that would have undoubtedly been included in the deal.

The Angels' front office was a mixed camp when it came to retaining or trading Ohtani. Some were dead-set on getting Ohtani and Trout into the postseason, while others wanted to accept the reality that they did not have what it took to reach the playoffs (let alone make a run). Clearly, in hindsight, the Angels should have made the deal, but it was a difficult decision. The Angels were outside, but close, to a Wild Card spot in 2023 when they went all-in at the trade deadline, but were firmly out of the race at the 2022 trade deadline.

The decision was Moreno's to make, so naturally it was about dollars and cents: “From a fan perspective, they pay for tickets and watch the games and listen to the games, this is a special guy. I’d like to see him play. We’re in the entertainment business. We made a decision, a group decision, that the best thing was to keep him and make a run.” Moreno and Angels Team President, John Carpino, are notorious penny pinchers, and they wanted to maximize Ohtani's Angels tenure in order to make as much money as they could off of him. Trading Ohtani and rebuilding meant they would have lost merchandise, sales, and advertisement money.

Moreno is taking blame for not trading and not resigning Ohtani, leaving Angels fans clamoring for him to sell the team once and for all. It's too late to salvage the damage he's already inflicted though. The Angels are now tanking, two or three years too late. They lost out on a number of top prospects that could have kick-started the process of bringing their farm system out of dregs of the league. The Angels have little hope of contending anytime soon, and will likely never see a player of Ohtani's (or Trout's) caliber ever again.