This Is Going To Hurt (or Farewell Ohtani)

The broken bone that breaks the dam

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We witnessed history and didn’t even realize it. How could we have?

Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani hit home runs in the same game for the 30th time on Sunday, July 2. Trout’s solo shot opened the scoring against Diamondbacks pitcher Zac Gallen, who started the All-Star Game for the NL earlier this week, and Ohtani’s 454-foot bomb in the bottom of the eighth provided an insurance run for the Angels.

In between those round-trippers, my son indulged in cotton candy, a hot dog, and a vanilla soft-serve helmet sundae.

That’s what I like to call a good day at the yard.

After Trout’s first-inning homer, I felt like I was playing with house money (not to be confused with the less metaphorical legal tender that we distributed throughout Angel Stadium concessions). My son’s favorite player had gone deep, and Ohtani still hadn’t yet dug into the batter’s box. It was also my first time seeing Trout homer in person. (A quick fact-check revealed that, entering this season, Trout had never homered against Arizona; this home run his the first vs. the D-backs.)

In my efforts to rehabilitate myself as a baseball fan, seeing Trout deposit one over the fence in front of the home crowd and being able to cheer alongside my son certainly brought forward the pure joy of the game. When Ohtani added on later, I felt spoiled.

At the game’s completion, fireworks — “and fire, Dad!” — ignited from the rock pile in center field. The pyrotechnics were for the home team’s victory, but it felt like an appropriate way to commemorate the first complete game for my soon-to-be five-year-old son. Quality strike-throwing and the pitch clock inspired a day game played in two hours and 21 minutes.

Trout and Ohtani, Ohtani and Trout, homering together for the 30th time. If teams still issued tickets, I would have kept the stub.

The next night, my daughter and I headed to Petco Park — this time seeing the Angels in their road grays. Knowing that her younger brother had gone the distance the day before, there was no way that my little lefty was begging out of this game. It took almost one hour longer to record the same number of outs that my son and I had witnessed the day before. But at 9:56 pm, as Matt Thaiss swung through a slider from Josh Hader, my daughter had registered her first CG.

Padres and Angels fans alike began leaving the stadium in earnest after the seventh inning. The pace of play had been painfully slow at times, especially in the first half of the game (the Angels left 14 men on base total), and regardless of what you think of the Padres bullpen, the outcome of the game seemed well determined as the final innings approached.

By the end, the crowd had thinned out to the point that the parking lot was quiet as we headed towards our car. Walking about 25 feet ahead of us was a man in a suit. He turned around when he heard my daughter and me talking, did a double-take — no, friends, he wasn’t looking at me — and revealed a baseball. It was Don Orsillo, the play-by-play voice for Padres telecasts.

“This is for you,” he said, handing the pearl to my daughter, asleep on her feet and unsure exactly of what was happening. I coaxed out a “thank you” from her, and we continued to the car. A few minutes later, she was asleep in the back seat, head slumped to the right, ball secured in her left hand.

Home runs for my son and a game ball for my daughter. The game fulfills dreams we never knew we had.

The game also can turn its back on sentimentality.

About an hour before Orsillo gifted my daughter that baseball, Mike Trout fractured the hamate bone in his left hand.

The initial estimates indicate that the Angels will be without their star center fielder for four to eight weeks. However it shakes out, I expect Trout to be out of the lineup until at least August, after the trade deadline has passed.

This is where I put down the nachos and take off the foam finger. This is how the game becomes a business. This is when it’s best that the children are asleep in the back seat.

Had my son and I seen Trout and Ohtani homer in the same game for the final time ever?

Is Ohtani’s tenure in Anaheim as fragile as a small bone in Trout’s hand? Does one bad break beget another for Angels fans?

The two-way star’s impending free agency has been much anticipated for months. On the few occasions that he does address the future, Ohtani seems to stay in the same lane: He doesn’t like losing, he’s tired of losing, and he doesn’t want to lose.

I use my English degree to read between the lines of his most recent comment: “It sucks to lose.” I peek at the standings.

I don’t see a scenario in which Ohtani returns to Anaheim next year.

Now, it’s easy to say that the Angels must trade Ohtani in order to receive adequate value for the final two months of his service. It’s also easy to say that the time to trade him was this time last year when his value, obviously, was much greater. But, as I will never get tired of saying: The game is not played in order to accrue prospects.

Additionally, the priorities of fans and of owners will not always align. Less than one year ago, Angels owner Arte Moreno had retained financial advisers to assist in the sale of the team. Five months later, he announced that he was keeping the team. Where Moreno sits as owner — are his primary motivations financial or do they lie in on-field success? — may determine the franchise’s course of action more than any other factor.

With Shohei Ohtani specifically, there is no precedent. He stands alone, and that might be problematic.

Plenty of high-profile rental players have been traded before: Scherzer, Machado, Darvish, to name a few of the most recent. But none of those players is Ohtani.

This is Curse of the Bambino territory for a different era.

Beyond the intentions of any owner or desires of any baseball operations department, the greatest obstacle in an Ohtani trade might be the Shohei exchange rate. What do the Angels expect in return for the player, what is another team willing to surrender, and is there a way to bridge that gap and make a deal?

The services of a star player for two-plus months (and, as the acquiring team hopes, the postseason) has a fairly well established value of three higher-end prospects.

Last season, there were no rental deals of any significance. The biggest trades featured star players with additional years of control attached to them (Juan Soto, Josh Hader, Luis Castillo, Frankie Montas, Jorge Lopez).

Machado yielded five players when the Orioles sent him to Los Angeles (quantity over quality). The D-backs sent three prospects to Detroit for J.D. Martinez. The Dodgers sent three players to Texas for Yu Darvish.

Maybe the best comp, though, is from a deadline deal between the Dodgers and the Nationals in 2021. The Nats sent free agent-to-be Max Scherzer and Trea Turner, who was under team control for one additional year, to Los Angeles for the Dodgers’ top two prospects, catcher Keibert Ruiz and pitcher Josiah Gray, and two additional players of much lesser consequence both then and now. Both Ruiz and Gray were widely regarded among the top prospects in baseball at the time of the trade.

I remember questioning the overall haul received by the Nats at the time. It was a matter of quality over quantity, but for two impact players and that extra season of Turner, I wondered how Los Angeles had negotiated such a low acquisition cost. Time, which is always needed but not always granted in trades that involve prospects, is making Washington look smart.

To the Nats’ credit, they inked Ruiz earlier this year to an eight-year deal that will keep him in the Nation’s Capital through 2030, with options to retain his services beyond that. Gray, meanwhile, was the Nationals’ lone representative at this week’s All-Star Game. Mike Rizzo and his staff identified the right players, and that puts them well ahead of many teams that have traded star players recently.

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Too often it becomes about “winning” a trade in the court of public opinion. Rizzo had — and presumably still has — the trust of his ownership. He could make a trade that he believed would put his organization on the right path. Gray and Ruiz figure to be an integral part of the next Nationals playoff team (whenever that may be). Scherzer and Turner have since both left Los Angeles, and they didn’t leave any hardware behind. In July 2023, there’s only one team with something to show for that deal.

I remember Kevin Towers once telling me that sometimes you just have to get a deal done — that the ideal trade some people always aspire towards might not exist. Sometimes, a good deal is the best deal. That notion served the Nationals well a couple years ago, and it could serve the Angels very well this month.

We also forget that there are factors that transcend a two-dimensional fantasy baseball trade:

• Are players unhappy?

• Has the clubhouse environment gotten awkward because of rumors and distractions?

• Have rumors persisted so long that one team begins to lose leverage?

• Does an owner suddenly want to reduce expenditures without publicly stating so?

It’s easy to criticize trades when they’re viewed merely as a snapshot in portrait mode, absent of background noise or photobombers.

So let’s understand that the perfect deal for Shohei Ohtani does not exist. But there are deals out there. There are also reasons to keep him.

The 2019 Giants surprised. Farhan Zaidi had recently taken over the reigns of baseball operations, and it was the final season for beloved manager Bruce Bochy, a three-time champion in San Francisco. That Giants team looked like sellers for much of the first half, and they had assets, including Madison Bumgarner on an expiring contract. They entered July 36-47. Then they went on a 19-6 run.

As the team kept winning and a fleeting playoff chance materialized, it became more difficult for Giants leadership to pull the plug. Romantically, it seemed that Bochy deserved one final chance to work his magic.

The Giants traded off a couple pieces, including relievers Sam Dyson and Mark Melancon. They trimmed payroll while also adding some bodies to their minor league system. Looking back four years later, they did a very good job.

Again, those Giants snatched victory from the jaws of defeat on many nights that July. After a stretch in which they won nine of 10, they found themselves only two games back of the second (and then-final) Wild Card spot.

Ohtani’s team opened the second half of the season one game under .500 and five games out of the third and final Wild Card. Last night, he drew the starting assignment and was inconsistent with his command. Ohtani was not at his best, and the Angels lost to the Astros, 7-5.

In 2019, the Giants’ 19-6 record in July forced the organization’s hand. A 1-7 start this month would seem to do the same.

The scoreboard says the Angels should trade Ohtani.

Over the next two weeks, the Angels can wait and see while, privately, they accept offers from suitors.

For the 2019 Giants, the bottom fell out shortly after the trade deadline passed. They played both August and September at 11-16 clips. Timing is rarely perfect. The trade deadline is an arbitrary date that requires an honest assessment of the present and the near future.

The Angels are doing the organization the courtesy of bowing out well before the deadline.

We’ve seen Trout and Ohtani homer in the same game for the last time.

Where will Ohtani end up? That’s for another day. WTP offers free and paid subscriptions. Sign up now and never miss a word.