Angels had chance to match Dodgers' offer to Shohei Ohtani, but didn't want to do so

The Dodgers recently signed Shohei Ohtani to a 10-year, $700M contract, but with heavy deferrals that make the net present value significantly less than that. He was reportedly discussing similar deals with clubs like the Giants and Blue Jays but Jack Harris of the Los Angeles Times reports that Angels owner Arte Moreno did not want to match those offers.

As mentioned, the deal with the Dodgers is heavily deferred, with Ohtani set to make just $2M annually during the course of the deal. He will then receive $68M per year for the 10 years after he has played the seasons covered by the contract. That brings down the net present value, with the league valuing it at just over $460M, while the MLBPA has it at $437,830,563. Farhan Zaidi, the president of baseball operations of the Giants, recently revealed that the club offered Ohtani essentially the same deal he accepted from the Dodgers. The Blue Jays were “right there,” according to a report from Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet.

All reports indicated that Ohtani and his reps were driving a lot of the negotiations. It was apparently Ohtani’s idea to have such an unusual contract structure, which he proposed as it would allow the signing club more financial freedom in the short term to build a winning club around him. The Dodgers, Giants and Blue Jays were all seemingly willing to meet his ask in comparable ways, but he chose the Dodgers and their unparalleled track record of recent success.

The Angels, however, don’t appear to have been at the final table. Per the report from Harris, Ohtani’s agent Nez Balelo reached out to them toward the end of the process and gave them a chance to convince Ohtani to stay. But Moreno was reportedly unwilling to match the offer Ohtani eventually signed. 

“It’s a place that he really loved to play. He loved the people there, everything. So we didn’t want to miss the idea of giving them an opportunity,” Balelo said. “But at the end, it just wasn’t going to work.”

As Harris points out, it’s not clear Ohtani would have seriously considered a return to Anaheim even if the Angels were willing to match the asking price. But the fact that they were not willing to do so seems to have eliminated any chances of a reunion. It’s unknown what kind of final offer the Angels did make.

Moreno has generally been unafraid to spend big on star players, giving big deals to players like Mike Trout, Albert Pujols and Anthony Rendon. It’s interesting that he decided to pull the reins on the Ohtani chase, but it’s unknown exactly why or how close they were.

The club will now have to enter a post-Ohtani world and try to chart a course forward without him. General manager Perry Minasian has made it clear that the club is not rebuilding and is not trading Trout. In 2023, they ran their payroll up against the competitive-balance tax, ultimately staying narrowly beneath it. Roster Resource pegs their 2024 CBT number at $168M at the moment, almost $70M below next year’s base threshold. That should give them plenty of room to make some bold strikes, likely to upgrade the pitching staff. Despite having both Ohtani and Trout on the roster for the past six years, the Angels haven’t finished above .500 since 2015, made the playoffs since 2014 or won a postseason game since 2009.