Angels News: Insider Reveals Potential Landing Spot for Shohei Ohtani Next Offseason
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Angels superstar Shohei Ohtani is heading into his final season under contract with the Halos and will hit free agency after the 2023 season. Like everything else Ohtani does, the demand for his services is likely to be unprecedented.
Something else in MLB is unprecedented right now, too, and that's Mets owner Steve Cohen's willingness to spend crazy amounts of money on star players. As Jon Heyman writes in the New York Post, Ohtani and Cohen might be a match made in unprecedented baseball heaven.
Heyman writes about players the Mets might target next offseason, and after first talking about Padres third baseman Manny Machado, he gets to Ohtani.
He probably shouldn’t be No. 2 on any list, but there’s some concern about whether he’d go to New York. One baseball executive said he was flat-out told Ohtani didn’t want to come here when he was first free five years ago. (His handlers say that was a long time ago and tastes change, but of course they have to hope he’d consider Cohen’s team for the sake of negotiations, which will get crazy anyway for the world’s best player.) The Dodgers seem primed for a run at Ohtani, and the bidding should get to the $500M range, at least.
Ohtani's rebuffing of the New York teams was a source of hard feelings when he first came over from Japan, if you can imagine New York baseball fans thinking the world centers around them. Still, Ohtani will have to at least entertain Cohen's overtures to maximize his market, and once you're listening, it can be hard to say no to ridiculous amounts of money.
Ohtani's market is going to be historic, and there's no way Cohen and the Mets won't be involved. Does Cohen get everything he wants? We'll find out next winter.
