Angels News: Writer Predicts Shohei Ohtani Signs With East Coast Team Next Offseason
I don't know if you knew this, but Shohei Ohtani is entering his final year of team control. At the end of this season, Ohtani will be an unrestricted free agent, and will command a contract upwards of $500 million. And now that Arte Moreno is not selling the Angels, almost no one knows what's going to happen with Ohtani.
While all thirty MLB teams would love to have him on their squad, there are only a select amount of realistic landing spots. As of now, there are eight teams that have been linked to Ohtani as free agent destinations, and another four as potential trading partners. And while the Los Angeles Dodgers feel like the team ready to load up for a run at Ohtani, the guys at Bleacher Report predict he signs with another National League team: The New York Mets.
"We're predicting that Ohtani's 2023 will see him have a career year while suiting up for the Angels, Dodgers and finally the Mets, who will lure him with a bag containing half-a-billion dollars."
In their prediction, they think the Dodgers will trade for Ohtani, but then lose him in the offseason to the Mets. While that sounds crazy, the idea of him signing with the Mets is far from it.
MLB insider Jon Heyman has already linked the Mets to Ohtani as a potential landing spot, and we saw what their owner Steve Cohen did this offseason. Money clearly wasn't a barrier for him in making win-now moves, and next offseason, we shouldn't expect any less. Moreover, now that Carlos Correa isn't signing with the Mets, they have even more money to send Ohtani's way to try to lure him to the Big Apple.
The only potential reason to be wary of Ohtani going to the Mets is that when he initially came to America back in 2017, he didn't want to play in New York. We don't know if his view of that has changed, but it's the one thing to watch out for as a potential deterrent for Ohtani playing for the Mets.
