NASHVILLE, Tenn. — I am here to tell you about the terrible things that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said on Tuesday.
He said the Dodgers met with Shohei Ohtani, which everyone in the baseball world knew they would. He said Ohtani is the Dodgers’ No. 1 priority, which everyone in baseball knew he was. Roberts said he would bet on the kind of person that Ohtani was in believing the righty will recover from a second Tommy John surgery to pitch again and that is why the Dodgers are willing to invest what will certainly be record dollars to try to land the superstar.
As revealing secrets go, let’s just say Roberts fell short of offering the nuclear codes. As far as praise, Roberts nearly got all the way to citing Ohtani as a hitter, a pitcher and a cancer-curing Santa Claus.
So obviously it was time for the Dodgers to distance themselves from the manager with the highest winning percentage in MLB history. Their general manager Brandon Gomes spoke at a planned session with reporters later in the afternoon and would not back his manager with the simplest version that Roberts just stated the obvious and the positive.
Instead, the organization all but put its manager on an ice floe and kicked him out to sea.
That is because the biggest name in the sport is also the name you dare not speak — or reveal any details about. Ohtani and Nez Balelo, his CAA agent, defined a negotiation in which, Jeff Passan of ESPN reported, that the revealing of meetings with the player would be held against the team.
Asked if Roberts’ benign words would be held against the Dodgers, Gomes offered, “I don’t know.”
If they are, that would say quite a bit about Ohtani. That the Dodgers and Blue Jays and Cubs, etc., are so scared to offer even the most basic information about the most important player the sport has had in decades (maybe ever) says so much more about them. Especially since the mute act is ongoing at the winter meetings — the largest convention of the game designed to drum up interest in baseball amid football, basketball and hockey seasons.
It is the right of Ohtani to hold whatever kind of negotiation he wants and for Balelo to protect his player — and commission. But it can’t be good for Ohtani to be at the center of a negotiation infused with paranoia and joylessness. And it is just terrible for the sport as adults have been rendered ridiculous. For example, Blue Jays manager John Schneider on Tuesday played word salad as he refused to acknowledge that Toronto officials met Monday in Dunedin, Fla. — their spring home — with Ohtani, when everyone knows that happened.
Ohtani is notoriously private. He works assiduously to limit his access to reporters. He only speaks after he pitches — and limits the questions. He last talked to reporters, therefore, on Aug. 9. He tore his UCL not long after and watching Angels GM Perry Minasian tightrope with information when the team was at Citi Field late in August made it all feel that Ohtani was his boss rather than the other way around. Among other things, after winning his second AL MVP, Ohtani’s conference call with reporters was bizarrely canceled at the last moment at a time when he clearly did not want to be asked questions about his free agency.
Again, Ohtani can handle this however is necessary to allow him to perform on the field and gain whatever control in contract talks he wants. But one reason he is going to be paid as much as he is going to be paid comes with the interest fans have in the game. And Ohtani is MLB’s LeBron James or Patrick Mahomes, but without accepting what that mantle means for growing the sport outside of competitive lines.
Until Ohtani signs, it is difficult for the rest of the market to flow as teams try to figure out if they have him or not and what it means to their roster and available cash. But the pace is the pace. What is hurtful to the industry is to lack the perspective to announce say six finalists one day and what Ohtani is prioritizing in conversations with teams and then perhaps offering a Final Two before he delivers the proverbial rose.
All of that would have provided a steady flow of interest and analysis that kept the sport front burner during the Hot Stove. Instead, the Ohtani camp offered nothing and a bunch of executives desperate for his services kowtowed in their quarter zips and khakis afraid to even mention Ohtani’s name, much less any information about the most important free-agent pursuit ever.
That is why Roberts should not have been ostracized by his own organization on Monday.
He should have been named the MVP of the freaking winter meetings.