Passan: Ohtani’s magic cut short by limits of the body
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Jeff Passan, ESPN
Every minute of the past three years Shohei Ohtani spent on the baseball field was a gift. The most perfect ball-playing specimen ever to wear a uniform, simultaneously one of the best hitters and pitchers in a sport that for a century had demanded players choose one track or the other, Ohtani recalibrated what the game could be. He was baseball at its zenith. He is baseball, period.
What everyone took for granted, as he launched majestic home runs and unfurled unfair pitches, was the Faustian bargain underpinning it all — that as Ohtani trafficked in the impossible, he was relying on a wholly imperfect vessel to deliver it. Ohtani’s most formidable opponent was never the pitchers or hitters he faced. It was his body and its capacity to withstand everything he asked of it. Ligaments do not care about legend.
Ohtani being Ohtani, he reacted to the news that he had suffered a tear in the ulnar collateral ligament of his right elbow in Game 1 of a doubleheader Wednesday by batting second for his Los Angeles Angels in Game 2. Ohtani will not pitch again this season. He might need another Tommy John surgery. His already-complicated free agency, just two months away, is now even more confusing. And Ohtani knew all of it in the second game, which, in hindsight, makes a moment that looked so wholesome at the time so heartbreaking now.
In the fifth inning, Ohtani doubled — you can still swing the bat with a UCL tear — and awaiting him at second base stood Cincinnati shortstop Elly De La Cruz, a 6-foot-5, switch-hitting, homer-crushing, 21-year-old rookie wunderkind who also happens to be the fastest man in baseball. A full-blown unicorn. And even to him Ohtani is something different altogether. To introduce himself, De La Cruz extended his right index finger and poked 29-year-old Ohtani on the arm five times, chuckling, as if to say: Are you even real?
It’s the sort of question anyone who watched Ohtani asked constantly. And Wednesday’s lesson was that he’s all too real — not a baseball automaton sent from the future to transfix but flesh and blood. Like any ballplayer, always one pitch, one swing, one stride away from a muscle or tendon or bone or ligament failing. Ohtani took on more than any other player: starting for the Angels once a week and serving as their designated hitter nightly. The job and its level of stress chipped away, little by little. And even then, Ohtani never accepted training at a reduced rate to give himself a break. Why would he? The work got him to this place.
And what a place it was. His native Japan served as the petri dish for Ohtani’s two-way experiment, and almost immediately upon his arrival to Major League Baseball as a 23-year-old in 2018, he cut a transcendent figure, his bat an awfully good sidekick to his vaunted arm. Then his UCL gave out that first season, and rehab didn’t heal it. The subsequent Tommy John surgery in October 2018 kept him off the mound in 2019 and might as well have in 2020.
It’s not that his return to form in 2021 was surprising — because to be surprised by Ohtani is a user error — but it was glorious. It could be done for a full season: 46 home runs in 155 games played, 130⅓ innings of 3.18 ERA ball over 23 starts, one unanimous American League MVP Award. And then, he showed it could be done two seasons in a row, with 2022 a little worse at the plate, a little better on the mound, undeniably MVP-worthy if not for Aaron Judge.
And now this year. Even by Ohtani’s standards it has been singular. He has been the best hitter in baseball, leading the big leagues in home runs (44), triples (7), OPS (1.069) and total bases (310). He has held opposing hitters to a .184 batting average, the lowest of all 146 pitchers who have thrown at least 70 innings. He entered 2023 with prospective suitors wondering whether he’d live up to earning the first $500 million free agent contract in baseball history, and by the middle of the season, a half-a-billion-dollar bid was liable to get a team laughed out of the room.
Perhaps the most fully formed version of Ohtani was the one we saw this spring: captain of World Baseball Classic-winning Team Japan, capper of the tournament with a strikeout of his friend and Angels teammate Mike Trout. It was a moment upon which baseball fans can reflect, perhaps wistfully, fearful that peak Ohtani has passed. It’s possible. Age is undefeated. The greatest predictor of a future arm injury is a past arm injury. Nobody, not even Ohtani, can avoid all aphorisms.
Now come questions. How bad is the tear? Will Ohtani try platelet-rich plasma again in an attempt to heal it, or is surgery a fait accompli? Regardless of Ohtani’s approach to fixing his elbow, he might not miss games for long. In 2019, seven months after surgery, Ohtani returned to DH full time as he did his Tommy John rehab for pitching. Back then, doctors considered it safe. But the demand on Ohtani’s arm far exceeds that of the typical hitter, and a second procedure leaves the elbow that much more fragile. The discussion on what’s best for Ohtani’s future will come into focus in the coming days as the Angels wind toward another playoff-free season and the expiration of his contract.
What the injury means for his future as a pitcher is bound to play a part in his free agency. The failure rate is overwhelming for players who have undergone the Tommy John procedure twice in a five-year span: Jameson Taillon, the most successful, returned and signed a four-year, $68 million free agent contract this winter. Daniel Hudson closed out a World Series. Drew Rasmussen grew into an elite starter — only to blow out a third time. Cole Ragans, a wildly talented 25-year-old, is looking the part for Kansas City but hasn’t thrown even 100 big league innings.
Of course, Ohtani does the things others can’t. He is not an outlier. He is the outlier. If he wants to be a starter again, he will be a starter again. He has earned that, and if one team doesn’t concur, Ohtani will find another that does. Because as much as the ligament tear muddies the valuation on Ohtani, whatever team is lucky enough to land him will get the biggest star in the game since Ken Griffey Jr., regardless of how many pitches he throws again. The past three years vaulted Ohtani to that rarefied place few baseball players go. He is, a century later, in achievement and prestige, Babe Ruth. And in talent, Ruth pales to Ohtani.
Ruth, remember, never played every day and pitched full time. He didn’t think it possible. Ohtani proved it so, hefty though the cost might have been. “It is a wonder he held up this long,” a person familiar with Ohtani’s routine said early Thursday morning, after the announcement of Ohtani’s UCL tear from Angels general manager Perry Minasian sent an off-hours thunderclap through the sport. The chatter was all the same, more or less. Why him? Why now? Why at all?
Totally fair questions all, but their implication — their negativity — didn’t seem to be of interest to the one person who had the right to ask them. If you really want to know who Shohei Ohtani is, and what he’s made of, look at his reaction when De La Cruz poked him. He could’ve turtled away, glowered, snapped, and he would’ve been well within his right to do any considering what he was now facing. Instead, Ohtani smiled and returned the compliment, marveling at De La Cruz’s incredible talent — a kid from Japan and a kid from the Dominican Republic conversant in the language that binds them: baseball.
Optimism is Ohtani’s choice. The last time he was at this juncture, he returned and evolved into the greatest baseball player anyone has seen. Doubt him at your peril.
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Heather Dinich, Senior College Football Insider
ATLANTA — No major decisions were made regarding the future format of the 12-team College Football Playoff on Sunday, but “tweaks” to the 2025 season haven’t been ruled out, CFP executive director Rich Clark said.
Sunday’s annual meeting of the FBS commissioners and the presidents and chancellors who control the playoff wasn’t expected to produce any immediate course of action, but it was the first time that people with the power to change the playoff met in person to begin a review of the historic expanded bracket.
Clark said the group talked about “a lot of really important issues,” but the meeting at the Signia by Hilton set the stage for bigger decisions that need to be made “very soon.”
Commissioners would have to unanimously agree upon any changes to the 12-team format to implement them for the 2025 season.
“I would say it’s possible, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen or not,” Clark said on the eve of the College Football Playoff National Championship game between Ohio State and Notre Dame. “There’s probably some things that could happen in short order that might be tweaks to the 2025 season, but we haven’t determined that yet.”
A source with knowledge of the conversations said nobody at this time was pushing hard for a 14-team bracket, and there wasn’t an in-depth discussion of the seeding process, but talks were held about the value of having the four highest-ranked conference champions earn first-round byes.
Ultimately, the 11 presidents and chancellors who comprise the CFP’s board of managers will vote on any changes, and some university leaders said they liked rewarding those conference champions with byes because of the emphasis it placed on conference title games.
Mississippi State president Mark Keenum, the chair of the board of managers, said they didn’t talk about “what-ifs,” but they have tasked the commissioners to produce a plan for future governance and the format for 2026 and beyond.
Starting in 2026, any changes will no longer require unanimous approval, and the Big Ten and the SEC will have the bulk of control over the format — a power that was granted during the past CFP contract negotiation. The commissioners will again meet in person at their annual April meeting in Las Colinas, Texas, and the presidents and chancellors will have a videoconference or phone call on May 6.
“We’re extremely happy with where we are now,” Keenum said. “We’re looking towards the new contract, which is already in place with ESPN, our media provider, for the next six years through 2032. We’ve got to make that transition from the current structure that we’re in to the new structure we’ll have.”
Following Sunday’s meeting, sources continued to express skepticism that there will be unanimous agreement to make any significant changes for the 2025 season, but a more thorough review will continue in the following months.
“The commissioners and our athletic director from Notre Dame will look at everything across the board,” Clark said. “We’re going to tee them up so that they could really have a thorough look at the playoff looking back after this championship game is done … and then look back and figure out what is it that we need.”
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Andrea Adelson, ESPN Senior Writer
ATLANTA — ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said Sunday that the league will have conversations among coaches and athletic directors about whether to make changes to its conference championship game format.
The conversations are a result of the expanded 12-team College Football Playoff, and ensuring conference champions and the teams that play in conference championship game remain important.
This past season, SMU entered the ACC championship game as the regular-season champion but lost to Clemson in the ACC title game and had to sweat it out before selection day before earning a spot in the 12-team field.
Phillips said the ACC could consider giving its regular-season champion a bye, and have the teams that finish second or third in the league standings play in the ACC championship game.
He said another possibility is having the top 4 teams play on the final weekend of the regular season: first place versus fourth place, and second place vs. third place, with the winners playing the following weekend in the ACC championship game.
Phillips said he will have conversations with league head coaches on a conference call next week to get their feedback on the plan — specifically pointing to comments SMU coach Rhett Lashlee made leading up to the game in which he indicated the Mustangs might be better off not playing to protect its spot in the field.
Phillips also said these conversations will continue at the league’s winter meetings next month in Charlotte, North Carolina, and he has mentioned this is a topic among league athletics directors.
“The conference championship games are important, as long as we make them important, right?” Phillips said. “Do you play two versus three? You go through the regular season and whoever wins the regular season, just park them to the side, and then you play the second-place team versus the third-place team in your championship game. So you have a regular-season champion, and then you have a conference tournament or postseason champion.
“That’s one of the options, depending on how you treat the conference champions, or that championship game, you may want to do it different.
“I have alluded to that in some of our every-other-week-AD calls, and these are some of the things moving forward. We want to have a recap of the regular season, postseason, and what do we think moving forward?”
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