Angels owner Arte Moreno discusses Shohei Ohtani's future

Shohei Ohtani’s long-term future has been a marquee storyline in the game for the past couple of years. He’s now a season away from the open market, where he presently seems on track for a record-setting contract. There’s already been plenty of speculation among rival fan bases and presumably within other front offices about the possibility of Ohtani signing elsewhere after five seasons with the Angels.

Halos brass has unsurprisingly maintained on numerous occasions they’re hopeful of retaining the two-way superstar for the long haul. Owner Arte Moreno reiterated that goal in a recent interview with Jon Heyman of the New York Post. 

“I’d like to keep Ohtani. He’s one of a kind. He’s a great person,” the Angels owner told Heyman. “He’s obviously one of the most popular baseball players in the world, and he’s an international star. He’s a great teammate. He works hard. He’s a funny guy, and he has a really good rapport with fans.”

None of that registers as any kind of surprise, of course. Anaheim general manager Perry Minasian made similar comments last week, telling reporters the “whole organization would like nothing more than to see him here for a long, long time” and calling the 2021 AL MVP “somebody that we can envision here for a long, long time," according to the Associated Press (h/t ESPN).

Neither Moreno nor Minasian handicapped their odds of getting a deal done, nor did they specify whether there any plans for extension talks with Ohtani’s representatives at CAA this spring. Both expressed general optimism about the Angels’ chances of retaining him, with Moreno telling Heyman “we have as good a chance as anybody” at signing Ohtani to a long-term deal.

As recently as last month, it didn’t appear Moreno would be concerned about Ohtani’s long-term future in Anaheim. He’d been exploring a sale of the franchise dating back at least to last summer before pulling the team off the market in the middle of January. Sam Blum of The Athletic was among those to report in the aftermath of the decision that bids on the franchise were expected to top $2.5 billion, but Moreno had a change of heart about relinquishing the franchise.

That led to some questions among the fan base about whether the Angels’ chances of re-signing Ohtani took a hit with Moreno retaining control. The Angels have had seven straight below-average records and haven’t made the playoffs in eight years. Moreno admitted to Heyman “we have to win, we have to do a better job on the field,” but both he and Minasian have pointed out the Halos annually rank among the league’s top 10 in spending.

Cot’s Baseball Contracts estimates the Angels will open the 2023 campaign with the league’s seventh-highest payroll. They’re behind the Mets, Yankees, Padres, Phillies, Dodgers and Blue Jays by that estimate, and a handful of those big-market behemoths would surely relish the opportunity to make a run at Ohtani in free agency.

Cot’s projects the Angels for around $119M in guaranteed commitments for 2024, headlined by the megadeals for Mike Trout and Anthony Rendon. Trout is under contract through 2030, while Rendon is signed through 2026. Tyler Anderson and David Fletcher are the only other players with deals past the ’24 campaign, with the guaranteed portion of both contracts wrapping up in 2025.