{"id":62462,"date":"2023-09-20T10:00:48","date_gmt":"2023-09-20T14:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/?p=62462"},"modified":"2023-09-19T22:18:44","modified_gmt":"2023-09-20T02:18:44","slug":"ohtani-final-act-angel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/2023\/09\/20\/ohtani-final-act-angel\/","title":{"rendered":"Ohtani\u2019s Potential Final Act As An Angel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The final act of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/o\/ohtansh01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Shohei Ohtani<\/a>&#8216;s time as an Angel could be upon us. With only 13 games left this season, the most exciting player will be hitting the open market. What\u2019s more fascinating is how his second Tommy John surgery will play into the offseason plans of other teams. In other words, will a team want him to transition away from pitching and focus strictly on hitting? To clarify, there is nothing to say he won&#8217;t return to the mound in 2025. Furthermore, will he even leave the Los Angeles Angels?\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\">\n<p dir=\"ltr\" lang=\"en\">Shohei Ohtani had an operation on his elbow. The <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/hashtag\/Angels?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">#Angels<\/a> announced it via a statement from Ohtani\u2019s agent, Nez Balelo. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/bZh1sNzheg\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">pic.twitter.com\/bZh1sNzheg<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Rhett Bollinger (@RhettBollinger) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/RhettBollinger\/status\/1704249844469264574?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">September 19, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<h2>Ohtani&#8217;s<strong>\u00a0Final Act As An Angel<\/strong><\/h2>\n<h3><b>Ohtani\u2019s Wild 2023 Season<\/b><\/h3>\n<h4><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Ahead of the 2023 season, Ohtani was playing for Team Japan in the World Baseball Classic. Striking out <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/t\/troutmi01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mike Trout<\/a> to win the championship for Japan set the stage for 2023 to be a grand season for Ohtani. By the same token, there was talk and hope that, finally, the Angels would end their lengthy playoff drought. Moreover, Ohtani&#8217;s looming free agency was a storyline that would follow him all season. Another was the idea of trading Ohtani if the Angels were to fall out of contention again.\u00a0 Unquestionably, the lights would be shining bright on Ohtani all season long.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To say Ohtani\u2019s potential final act as an Angel was exciting is an understatement. His first-half line was .302\/.387\/.663 with a wRC+ of 177. In addition, he slugged 32 home runs in 89 games. That is to say, the AL home run record was in sight a year after being broken by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/j\/judgeaa01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Aaron Judge<\/a>. Without a doubt, he was in line to win his second MVP in three seasons. Meanwhile, on the mound, Ohtani had a 3.14 ERA, a 1.o61 WHIP, and a 21.9 K-BB%. In other words, Ohtani was on pace to make history again. Be it as it may, he still played for the Angels, whose most formidable enemy might be the executive offices of the organization. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The last few weeks in Ohtani\u2019s possible final days as Angel were interesting. In light of him needing a second Tommy John surgery in five years, he would exclusively hit the rest of the year. Of course, something terrible has to happen because he is an Angel. Ohtani pulled an oblique during batting practice before the Labor Day game against the Baltimore Orioles. After almost two weeks of waiting to see if the issue would fix itself, Ohtani finally landed on the IL. Regardless of him missing a month of the season, his final line is .304\/.412\/.654 with 44 home runs and 95 RBI. His numbers should yield him another AL MVP.<\/span><\/h4>\n<h3><b>Ohtani\u2019s Last Days In Anaheim<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">October 1 will likely be the last time Ohtani will be an Angel. It\u2019s important to realize that in the previous three seasons, Ohtani has been on an incredibly impressive run. He has managed to stand out even among two other big-money talents, Mike Trout and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.baseball-reference.com\/players\/r\/rendoan01.shtml\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Anthony Rendon<\/a>. On the positive side, the ride has been fun to witness as a fan. If not for Judge last year, Ohtani could be looking at his third MVP in a row. Still, the two weeks of playing for Team Japan in the World Baseball Classic and winning the MVP there is a nice bonus.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">[metabet_core_game_tile query=&#8221;530884&#8243; size=&#8221;350&#215;300&#8243; site_id=&#8221;lastwordonsports&#8221;]<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Over the last three seasons, Ohtani has tallied a line of .277\/.379\/.585. His journey as an Angel has been nothing short of magical. Every expectation has been exceeded by a wide margin. Unfortunately, the Angels&#8217; public relations department fumbled what was as harmless as him cleaning out his locker due to his upcoming elbow surgery. Undoubtedly, that was the lowest point of Ohtani\u2019s Angels career. He certainly deserves better than the poorly run Angels can and did offer him in the six years they had him on the roster.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Photo Credit: Kiyoshi Mio-USA TODAY Sports<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The final act of Shohei Ohtani&#8216;s time as an Angel could be upon us. With only 13 games left this season, the most exciting player will be hitting the open market. What\u2019s more fascinating is how his second Tommy John surgery will play into the offseason plans of other teams. In other words, will a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4629,"featured_media":62480,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[16,1071],"tags":[501,1261,248,2178],"class_list":["post-62462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-angels","category-mlb","tag-aaron-judge","tag-anthony-rendon","tag-mike-trout","tag-shohei-ohtani"],"modified_by":"Lewis Masella, Site Editor","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4629"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62480"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/baseball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}