The Yankees love the great Shohei Ohtani (who doesn’t?) and tried to acquire him again at the trade deadline, but multiple baseball people have expressed doubts about whether he’d want to come to New York as a free agent.
That doesn’t mean the Yankees won’t try for Ohtani a year from now, and people close to Ohtani maintain it’s wrong that he is anti-New York. They contend he has never expressed those sentiments, and furthermore that he’d be open-minded if he becomes a free agent. They add that he’s fully committed to the Angels for now, as his incredible performance shows.
Of course, if teams that didn’t make the Ohtani Derby final round six years ago formed an impression about Ohtani’s preferences — the Yankees did not make it — a lot may have changed. Ohtani now has way more than one meeting to go on. Regardless, the six other finalists were the Dodgers, Cubs, Giants, Mariners, Padres and Rangers, and two baseball executives suggested they could see the Giants landing Ohtani should he leave the Angels. Of course, supposition doesn’t bat 1.000 in baseball.
Ohtani has never said anything publicly about locale preferences. Some club execs believed he preferred a somewhat smaller market six years ago, perhaps on the West Coast. In any case, the Yankees were still among the most interested teams in aborted trade-deadline talks, before Angels owner Arte Moreno decided he couldn’t trade Ohtani, who has put together a second straight all-world season that would end in a second straight MVP in most other years.
It hasn’t been about money for Ohtani (he came to the U.S. before he could be paid market value), and he has indicated winning is key, along with being able to help his team any way he can. So that could play in the Yankees’ favor. One more difference as a free agent after 2023, as opposed to last time: As a true free agent this time, the monetary offers could be wildly different.
