Ohtani moves closer to an Oh-my-God moment

He will be ready for an impossibly rich and dangerous deal at the end of the season, but, first, can he get the Angels into the playoffs?

The eighth, or maybe eighth and ninth, wonder of the sports world was doing his things again Wednesday night, one better than the other. 

Shohei Ohtani pitched seven innings against the Dodgers and was hurt only by Freddie Freeman’s home run. As a hitter, though, he had four chances to cancel that mistake and went 0 for 3 with a walk.

The Angels lost, 2-0, for the second consecutive night, and their status as an American League playoff team is endangered by injuries to infielders Anthony Rendon, Gio Urshela and Zack Neto. 

The loss also sent them one day closer to a reckoning with Ohtani, but that doesn’t make them any different than the clubs who are panting to sign him away. In this risk-reward calculation, the reward for Ohtani and the risk for the team he joins will be unprecedented.

Ohtani struck out 12 Dodgers and regularly threw 99 and 100 mph pitches. If you’re tired of people gushing over what Ohtani has done in both halves of the inning the past two years, be prepared for more. And don’t blame the gushers, blame him. He keeps improving.

As a pitcher Ohtani came into Wednesday’s game ranking third in the American League in strikeouts and was eighth in WHIP. That means he led Tampa Bay’s Shane McClanahan, the Cy Young front-runner as we near the halfway point of the 2023 season, in strikeouts and ERA.

As a hitter Ohtani was first in home runs, first in RBI, first in slugging and was the only American League over 1.000 in OPS.

This is the first season Ohtani has been paid anywhere close to his production. He is making $30 million for this year only, as he eyes free agency this fall. In the two seasons before that, Ohtani was making $5.5 million and $3 million.

He speaks little of his plans, but he has indicated that the Angels need to start winning to earn his loyalty when the marketplace calls. They are on the way to doing that, with a 41-35 record that, at the moment, puts them within a half-game of the playoffs. They have said they won’t deal Ohtani before the end of this season.

The Dodgers cleared a lot of payroll room last year, which isn’t helping them much in the field, but might be providing a runway for Ohtani. The Mariners also bid strongly for Ohtani when he left Japan. San Francisco took a mighty swing at Aaron Judge last winter and missed, and now has freshened their roster and appears ready to contend again. The Giants desperately need box-office, all of a sudden, and nobody has more drawing potential on a nightly basis than Ohtani.

Given health, there is little doubt that the 28-year-old Ohtani will take all previous salary records and knock them halfway to Yokohama.

Just what is a fair number for the most unfair player of his age?

Well, the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole is making $36 million a year through 2028. He can opt-out after 2024, but the Yankees can deprive him of that option by guaranteeing another $36 million year in 2029, when Cole will be 38. Cole is 7-1 this year with a 2.45 ERA, and his excellent 1.113 WHIP is actually his worst since 2017.

So it would be reasonable to call Ohtani a $36 million a year pitcher in the context of Cole.

Now let’s give him a bat and see how it pencils out.

Judge would be the only fair comparison, because Ohtani’s offensive numbers have already surpassed those of teammate Mike Trout, even though Trout plays a defensive position fairly well and Ohtani is a DH when he isn’t pitching. Judge is a plus outfielder, and his OPS exceeds Ohtani’s, although he doesn’t qualify officially because he’s missed too many games. But Judge is also three years older than Ohtani.

The Yankees recaptured Judge’s services for nine years at $40 million per. So it would be reasonable for Ohtani to ask for the same as a hitter.

Combine Ohtani’s pitching and batting services, and that’s $76 million a year. Give him eight years, and that’s $608 million, which is roughly the annual GDP of Belgium.

Who can rationally argue? The buyer would be getting the equivalent of two premium players, except these two are 28 years old.

The downside, of course, is that an injury to Ohtani would mean the removal of those two premium players, and the chances of injury are 100 percent higher for Ohtani than for anyone else.

But it’s difficult to see him settling for anything less, particularly if he wins at least two legs of the A.L. Triple Crown – and he is also hitting .300.

Don’t expect this contract, even if it falls into the proletariat range of $500 million, to trigger a new-wave of full-inning players.

Paul Skenes

The John Olerud Award goes to the college player who distinguishes himself at the plate and on the mound alike, as Olerud did at Washington State on his way to the Blue Jays..

There are not many candidates. It’s reminiscent of the day when Houston OIlers coach Bum Phillips was asked if Earl Campbell was in a class by himself.

 “I don’t know what class he’s in,” Phillips said. “But it don’t take long to call the roll.”

The winner in 2022 was Paul Skenes, at Air Force. He was known as a catcher when he played at El Toro High in Orange County, California, the alma mater of MLB third baseman Nolan Arenado and Matt Chapman. Skenes is 6-foot-6 and hit .314 with a 1.046 OPS for the Falcons. Then he turned around and went 10-3 as a pitcher with a 2.73 ERA.

Air Force coach Mike Kazlausky knew how rare it was for such a Falcon to touch down on his diamond.

“He’s going to have to transfer,” he said last year, “because he is going to be a first-round pick.”

He was understating. Skenes transferred to LSU and became the best pitcher in college baseball this year, a candidate to lead off the upcoming MLB draft. Aided by pitching coach Wes Johnson, formerly of the Minnesota Twins, Skenes struck out 48 percent of the batters he faced this season. He went 12-2 with a 1.81 ERA, racking up 200 strikeouts as opposed to 19 walks. He led off the College World Series on Saturday with seven and two-thirds innings against Tennessee, and struck out 12.

On Thursday, Skenes will pitch for LSU in a loser-goes-home against top-ranked Wake Forest, which will also use a probable first-round pitcher, Rhett Lowder. The winner meets Florida in the best-of-three championship round.

But Skenes is no longer a candidate for the Olerud. He was given 18 at-bats this season and got no hits. Just imagine if he’d had to face Skenes.

“We thought, wait a minute, he’s going to get an $8 million signing bonus,” Johnson told Baseball America. “We can do this without him hitting. We can’t do it without him pitching. And if a pitcher runs a fastball up and in and breaks one of his fingers, that’s not good for Paul.”

Instead, the Olerud will likely go to Florida’s Jac Cagliaone, who led college baseball with 31 home runs yet went 7-3 on the mound with a 3.78 ERA. He vows to continue his double-duty as long as he can.

Brendan McKay had those ambitions when he came out of Louisville and was drafted by Tampa Bay, but he’s been felled by a number of injuries and will miss the whole of 2023 with Tommy John surgery. Spencer Schwellenbach of Nebraska was also an Olerud winner but also got hurt after Atlanta drafted him. Now he’s healthy and winning for Class-A Augusta, but he is only pitching.

The sports world, and indeed the world in general, is besotted by hype. Nikola Jokic, Pat Mahomes and Connor McDavid are truly great players in their time. It is premature, unfair and frivolous to speak of any of them in an alltime context, at least not yet.

But the automatic rejection of that type of hype has dimmed our view of just who Ohtani is and what he is doing. Barry Bonds never pitched; Roger Clemens rarely batted. In a sport that is choking itself on specialization, Ohtani’s ambition sets him apart from everyone who has ever played since Babe Ruth and, really, 1919 was the only year in which Ruth both pitched and hit at the level that Ohtani maintains now.

He will reach his exalted, postponed status when he signs his next bottom line. At that point Ohtani will be able to afford most series, and Worlds.

He will also pose next to team executives who will be straining hard to smile. Is it possible, at long last, for a club to make a mistake it can’t afford?