Jim Moore: Should the Mariners trade for Shohei Ohtani? Do you want to win or what?
What’s your interest level in Shohei Ohtani playing for the Mariners? Mine is through the roof and whatever it takes to make it happen.
Others, not so much. In a Twitter poll conducted by Dave “Softy” Mahler, a sports talk show host at KJR-FM, 44 percent of voters would not approve of a trade sending top prospect Harry Ford, highly regarded pitching prospect Emerson Hancock and current starting pitcher Bryce Miller to the Angels for Ohtani.
Their rationale - it’s not worth a trade for a player, even as great as Ohtani, if he’s only going to be here for two months. As you’re probably aware, Ohtani is going to be a free agent at the end of the season.
The 44 percenters would be fine with pursuing Ohtani in free agency since the Mariners would get him long-term and not lose any players to the Angels in the process.
With all due respect and honestly, forget that, with no respect at all, these 44 percenters are out of their minds. Prospects such as Ford and Hancock might be terrific in time. They also stand a decent chance of flaming out. And Miller has been good, bordering on very good, this season. But he’s still a rookie. And let’s not forget that you have to give up Wagyu instead of chopped liver to get a player like Ohtani. The Angels aren’t going to sign off on any deals for Ohtani involving Kolten Wong and A.J. Pollock.
The 44 percenters are apparently ruling out the possibility that Ohtani might be the move that would push the Mariners over the top and into the World Series. Have these 44 percenters lost sight of the fact that the Mariners, in 46 years as a franchise, are the only team to have never played in a World Series?
They’d probably argue that there are no guarantees of it happening with Ohtani, and I’ll give ‘em that. But there’s a better chance with him than without him. And if you don’t believe that, you didn’t see the Mariners’ first two games after the All-Star break, losing to the Tigers with their best two starting pitchers, Luis Castillo and George Kirby, on the mound.
The Mariners can’t hit on a consistent basis. The thing they do most consistently is swing and miss, ranking second in MLB with more than 900 strikeouts. They are on a pace to shatter the club record, which isn’t just mind-boggling, it’s boggling to every fiber of my being. This is a team that stresses “controlling the zone,” yet the Mariners continue to feature players who don’t do what they preach.
And it’s happening during the first year without the shift, which is supposed to encourage more hits instead of groundouts. What good is that when you can’t even put the ball in play?
For starters, the package that Softy put together would be laughable to the Angels, even for a rental player. We’re talking about Shohei Ohtani here. He might be the greatest player of all time. How many times have we seen a pitcher and hitter of his caliber? I’m 66, and in my lifetime, I’ll just go with zero.
Worst case, let’s say the Mariners don’t make the World Series with Ohtani and he signs with the Dodgers in the offseason? OK, fine, don’t you appreciate that the Mariners finally had a wild hair and went all in for him anyway?
Trading for Ohtani would allow him to get a better feel for Seattle. We already know he likes it here, saying as much after spending two off-seasons honing his craft at Driveline in Kent. And we think he wants to stay on the West Coast.
It’s easier to picture the Mariners offering the best trade package for Ohtani than winning a bidding war in the offseason. Even if he commands $600 million over 10 years, he’s certainly worth that kind of gamble in the standings and team store.
Forget Ford, Hancock and Miller, I’d try to get the Angels to bite on Logan Gilbert, Andres Munoz, Ford and another major-league starter such as Ty France or Jarred Kelenic. Would that be too much? Could it backfire? Maybe and of course. But we’re talking about a once-in-a-lifetime player. Ohtani would make up for the loss of Gilbert in the rotation and you name the player in the lineup.
A comment I heard from one of the 44 percenters cracked me up. He was concerned that an Ohtani addition might somehow mess with the chemistry in the clubhouse. As if the potentially greatest player ever would disrupt an intangible with a .500 team. If anything, he would dramatically improve chemistry, not to mention the whole damn club.
If the Mariners don’t go all in to acquire Ohtani in a trade, it will be more disappointing than their season thus far.
Jim Moore has covered Washington’s sports scene from every angle for multiple news outlets. You can find him on Twitter @cougsgo, and on KJR-FM 93.3, where he co-hosts a sports talk show from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. on weekdays.
This story was originally published July 17, 2023 at 5:00 AM.