Here’s what biggest All-Star Shohei Ohtani thinks of Seattle — and of becoming a free agent
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2023 All-Star Game in Seattle
Seattle’s T-Mobile Park is the focus of the baseball world this week as MLB’s top players gather for the 2023 All-Star Game. The TNT sports staff brings you all the action.
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The first thing Shohei Ohtani wanted to do upon entering the home clubhouse in Seattle for the first time?
Find where Ichiro Suzuki’s locker had been for the Mariners.
Like just about every person growing up with him in Japan in the early 2000s, Ohtani watched, via television across the Pacific Ocean, Ichiro become a Mariners legend in this same T-Mobile Park Ohtani and his fellow All-Stars were in Monday.
He — like just about every person in Japan — revered Ichiro.
Still does.
“Obviously, I’ve played at this field before, but I’d never gone on the home side,” Otani said through an interpreter who was wearing a Mariners-themed blue-and-Northwest-green All-Star hoodie Monday at the workout day for MLB’s 93rd midsummer classic. “I just checked it out a little earlier.”
He found Ichiro’s spot, along the front, right side of the M’s clubhouse. Ohtani and the American League All-Stars are using Seattle’s clubhouse as the home team at T-Mobile Park this week.
“I was kind of wondering where Ichiro was sitting,” Ohtani said. “So it was kind of cool seeing the home side.”
It was called Safeco Field for Ichiro then.
Could it be called Otani’s next home field?
No one had seen anyone like Ichiro when he stormed into the majors as a 27-year-old rookie right fielder for the 2001 Mariners — the team that set the American League record for wins the season Seattle last hosted the All-Star Game.
Now, no one has seen anyone like Ohtani. Ever.
So much has been made of Babe Ruth also being a pitcher (way) back in the day; Ruth went 23-12 with a league-leading 1.75 ERA for the 1916 Boston Red Sox, then gave up pitching two years into this 16 seasons playing for the New York Yankees. Ohtani hits home runs like a modern-day Ruth — 46 and 34 the last two seasons, a majors-leading 32 halfway through this season — while pitching as well and better than Ruth did.
Ohtani is a much faster, more dynamic base runner and all-around player.
“He’s the most incredible athlete I’ve ever seen in baseball,” American League manager Dusty Baker said. “Runs like the wind.”
Baker is 74 years old. He played the first eight seasons of his major-league career as an Atlanta Braves teammate of Hank Aaron, beginning as a rookie in 1968.
All that and more is why it’s not inconceivable Ohtani will earn MLB’s first $1 billion contract this winter, depending on the length of the deal he signs.
Ohtani’s spent offseason time in Seattle
If you haven’t heard — which is to say, if you don’t know what a baseball looks like — the American League’s leading home-run hitter AND ace pitcher becomes a free agent at the end of this season.
This year is the final one of the 29-year-old Ohtani’s contract. He signed it with the Angels after his Japanese League Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters posted him into MLB before the 2018 season.
Variations on the question of where Otani is likely to sign his next deal for $600 million or more this winter was about the only one he got in his 20 or so minutes speaking with English-language reporters Monday morning.
That was after he spent 20 minutes answering questions directly from Japanese reporters. They were filed 10 deep on the warning track of left-center field, far deeper than for any other All-Star. Cameras and boom microphones on sticks as long as Evergreens aimed at Otani. He was wearing his Angels red-and-white uniform for his third and perhaps final time at an All-Star game.
Ohtani will bat second as the American League’s designated hitter Tuesday, Baker announced.
Ohtani was asked if playing in an All-Star Game in Ichiro’s home ballpark holds special meaning for him.
“Obviously, I’ve played here a few times over the past few years. Sometimes I see Ichiro and I’ll say hi to him,” Ohtani said.
“I remember the first time I came here I was like, ‘Oh, this is the place I always watched on TV.’ So that was very special.”
It’s obvious Seattle isn’t just another MLB stop for Ohtani.
He’s spent his off time here in recent years.
“I actually spent two offseasons in Seattle, a total of, like, four months, maybe,” he said. “I’ve felt it’s a very nice city. Clean. I’ve really liked it.”
Players across the league are assuredly using regular-season games, pregame batting practices and, yes, this All-Star Game in Seattle to make impromptu sales pitches to Ohtani that he should sign with their teams next.
Which players? Which teams? Have the Mariners — with Julio Rodriguez, Luis Castillo and George Kirby playing in this All-Star Game and manager Scott Servais on Baker’s AL coaching staff — lobbied him?
“I’ll keep that a secret,” Ohtani said.
That made the interpreter smile.
Yet Ohtani paused to consider his relatively longer answer from The News Tribune, as to how much his contract ending and his baseball future beyond this fall weighs on him.
“I’ve never been a free-agent before, so I’m not sure how that’s going to be,” he said. “I’m focused on this season right now. I want to do my best, get as many wins as possible and do my best.”
That “free-agency” leaving Japan? He doesn’t see that as free agency. His Japanese League team posted him into MLB, rather than being free like any other MLB player.
“A whole different situation,” Ohtani said. “It is totally different this time.”
Winning matters most
Many around baseball saw Ohtani’s choice to sign with the Angels in 2018 as his preference of a smaller market. That is, Orange County instead of Los Angeles, New York or Chicago.
Seattle is a gateway to Asia with natural and cultural links to Japan. But it is not Los Angeles, New York or Chicago.
“It doesn’t really matter to me if it’s a bigger or smaller market,” Ohtani said. “The Angels fans, they come watch the Angels because they love the team. I want to perform my best for them. The stuff that I can control, whatever I can control, I want to do my best at it.”
He has 159 home runs in 5 1/2 seasons in the majors. His career on-base-plus-slugging percentage is .910. That’s better than Mike Schmidt, Ken Griffey Jr., Mo Vaughn, Willie Stargell and Willie McCovey had in their careers.
Oh, yeah: Ohtani is also 31-15 as a starting pitcher the last 2 1/2 seasons. He’d be pitching Tuesday in this All-Star game — he’s 7-4 this season — if not for a blister he got recently on his pitching hand.
He led the American League last season with 11.87 strikeouts per nine innings pitched. All for an Angels team that hasn’t made the playoffs with him and Mike Trout playing for them.
That, he said Monday, is what he values most in wanting from his future in the majors: Winning. Playoff games. The World Series.
“Those feelings get stronger year by year. It sucks to lose,” Ohtani said.
That’s where the Mariners’ recent surge into the All-Star break could help Seattle’s chances to sign Ohtani. The Mariners made the playoffs for the first time in 21 years last fall. They gave the eventual World Series-champion Houston Astros their sternest test of last postseason.
Seattle won three of four games at Houston last weekend. The Mariners are six games behind first-place Texas and four games behind Houston in the AL West, and four games out of a wild-card playoff spot with the second half of the season yet to play.
“I want to win,” Ohtani said. “It gets stronger every year.”
What about a trade?
The MLB trade deadline is Aug. 1. There has been talk the Angels, in fourth place in the AL West seven games out and five back of a wild-card spot, may trade Ohtani before the deadline rather than lose him for next to nothing to another team in free agency this winter.
Then again, imagine the haul of prospects and players any team would have to offer the Angels to get them to even consider trading Ohtani.
“Obviously, all the trade stuff, I have no control over,” he said. “So I try not to think about that stuff. I try to focus on the game that day, winning that game. That’s the hardest part, winning the games every day. That’s what I try to think about, not all the trade stuff.”
Asked if an event such as this showcase for MLB and the baseball world, his third All-Star Game in as many summers, makes him think any more about his future in the league, Ohtani said: “This is my third All-Star Game. Every time I play my goal is to come back to the All-Star Game every year. So that’s all I think about.
“This season is no different. Regardless of whether I am a free agent or not, I try to treat it as I do every other year.”
This story was originally published July 10, 2023 at 3:37 PM with the headline "Here’s what biggest All-Star Shohei Ohtani thinks of Seattle — and of becoming a free agent."
