At the Major League Baseball GM Meetings, everyone is talking about Shohei Ohtani.
The head of baseball operations for the Tampa Bay Rays, Erik Neander, said, “We all work around this game because we love it.”
We love good people. We enjoy reading stories. And without a doubt, he’s the most interesting talent our time has seen.
As the American League media rushed to get a look at the GM meetings on Tuesday afternoon, there were no questions or comments about Jerry Dipoto’s regrettable comments that the Mariners’ end-of-season news conference. Instead, there were conversations about gaining 54% of the time.
Fans still have a lot to say about it, especially on social media, because they are upset about last season’s results and the president of the baseball organization for the Mariners’ poor explanation.
However, the business for baseball and rumors about where Shohei Ohtani, the game’s biggest star, will end in free agency take up most of the conversation.
But Dipoto and the other directors in the American League wouldn’t give up much on Ohtani, who was the most-anticipated signing within recent memory.
Ohtani is the best two-way player in baseball history, even better than Babe Ruth. He will be honored next week in the second American League MVP award within three years.
On September 19, he had his second surgery on his arm in five years. He won’t be able to throw strikes again until possibly 2025, or even later, but it doesn’t matter.
Each baseball team wants him more than any other. Even though he will cost more than $400 million, the is likely to get more seven-figure deal offers than any other player in baseball history.
In the past, when an unsigned player hits the market, he usually gets two or three good deals.
Last winter, Aaron Judge only got offers by the New York Yankees, the Giants of San Francisco and the San Diego Padres.
The Phillies, Dodgers, and Giants were all teams that were interested in Bryce Harper. The Padres as well as the Chicago White Sox were the only teams to offer Manny Machado a contract.
However, Dipoto did talk about the main change between this time and the last: there is a salary which can be negotiated. Ohtani came over to Japan as an unknown free agent from another country.
He could only get bonus money from the foreign signing pool of a team. Now, he’s likely going to make the most money each year of any player with MLB history.
Dipoto said, “It’s uncertain, however I think that’s normal in a free-agent courtship.” “For a baseball player, it’s the only time in their life when they feel like a college coach.”
You want to sell your people, your city, and your mission. It’s not just one free agent, either. That’s how you handle free agents.
It was important to us that we could fix some of the problems in our team, Dipoto said. “Even though he didn’t have an excellent start to the season, he put up the points and helped us as much as any other player we had in the last few games.”
But we thought this was a good chance to look at our team in a new way. We thought that the failure to constantly make contact was probably the reason we were staying home during the playoffs.