When Randal Grichuk was traded to the Angels last year, arriving as one of several veteran additions the club made during its all-in trade deadline buying spree, he quickly recognized his new club’s main objective.
Sure, the Angels were trying to make the playoffs, hopeful of erasing a three-game deficit in the wild card standings for their first postseason berth since 2014.
But really, the moves were all about Shohei Ohtani — serving as one last attempt to show the Japanese star and pending free agent that Anaheim was a place where he could compete for championships.
“I think they were trying to prove to him that they’re willing to do what it takes to be a successful organization and reach the postseason,” Grichuk, now an outfielder with the Arizona Diamondbacks, recalled this week.
Grichuk’s next recollection came with a sigh.
“Obviously,” he said, “it just didn’t work out.”
Indeed, much has changed in the calendar year since.
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The Angels flamed out of playoff contention in spectacular fashion last fall, losing seven straight games at the start of August to quickly dash their deadline plans.
A few weeks after that, the nadir got deeper, when Ohtani was lost for the season to elbow and oblique injuries.
His last game with the team was Sept. 3, 2023.
On the first anniversary of that date, Ohtani will be back in Anaheim on Tuesday night.
In what will be his first regular-season appearance at Angel Stadium as a member of a visiting club, Ohtani and the Dodgers begin a two-game Freeway Series amid the kind of postseason surge he never experienced in Anaheim.
The Dodgers have a healthy division lead after taking three of four games from the Arizona Diamondbacks. Ohtani has been chasing MLB history in the process, with his 44 home runs and 46 stolen bases leaving the league’s first 50-50 season within reach.
“Up to this point, I’ve never been in such a good position in September,” Ohtani said Monday in Japanese. “It’s special, and in the midst of that, playing against a divisional rival we’re battling in the standings is also an experience I hadn’t had until now. I think there are a lot of games with a heightened sense of urgency.”
This is the dynamic that always made Ohtani likely to leave the Angels as a free agent.
At various points of his Angels career, he emphasized his desire to win and compete for championships. But at almost every juncture of his time in Anaheim, the club’s top-heavy roster, perennial injury problems and questionable spending decisions prevented that from happening.
“Me personally, I had seasons that were good but also seasons in which I was injured and couldn’t play or couldn’t pitch,” Ohtani said when asked about the Angels’ struggles during his time there, shouldering responsibility for organization-wide problems. “If I had been able to contribute to the maximum, I think there are parts that would have been different.”
Despite all that, however, there was much speculation around the industry during Ohtani’s free agency that he desired — if not preferred — to re-sign with a floundering Angels team.
It was the MLB team he originally picked when he first came from Japan. The place where he flourished as the league’s first two-way player in generations, unanimously winning the MVP award in 2021 and 2023.
Yet, come Tuesday night, Ohtani will be on the visiting side of Angel Stadium — thanks to a decision that still rankles much of his old fan base.
As The Times first reported back in December, the Angels didn’t match the $700 million offer Ohtani and his agent, Nez Balelo of CAA Sports, presented to interested teams at the end of his free-agent sweepstakes.
And it remains unclear what would have happened if they did.
Ohtani deflected such speculation on the eve of his return Monday night.
When asked if he was surprised the Angels declined his camp’s $700 million proposal — the only of Ohtani’s finalists to do so — he answered: “Regarding that, nothing in particular. I think other teams, including the Dodgers, evaluated me highly. Rather than think about what the Angels did or didn’t do, I’m grateful for the teams that evaluated me highly.”
When asked if he might have re-signed with the Angels if they had, Ohtani said: “In reality, I wasn’t made an offer, so I can’t say. In reality, I’m doing my best with this team, and I’m doing my best with the goal of winning the World Series. I think I’m fine with that.”
They were predictably opaque answers from the media-shy Ohtani (who has stopped holding any pregame media interviews since the middle of this season).
But they will do little to quell the questions many Angel fans, and former teammates, will be asking themselves when they watch Ohtani take the field in Dodger blue Tuesday night.
“That’s the word,” Angels pitcher Tyler Anderson told the New York Post at this year’s All-Star Game, when asked if he thought Ohtani would have re-signed in Anaheim had the $700 million offer been made — a popular point of industry speculation in the wake of Ohtani’s free agency decision last December.
“He obviously did so well [in Anaheim], and I feel like if he obviously wants to have a Hall of Fame career, if you stay with one team, that’s the way to do it. He was clearly comfortable there to put up the numbers he had and everything he did. I’m sure there’s something to that.”
In hindsight, it made the Angels’ decision to go all-in at last year’s trade deadline puzzling.
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Rather than gear up for the predictable rebuild they’ve slipped into this year, they tried to convince Ohtani to stay — only for owner Arte Moreno to drop out of the bidding at the final stage of the superstar’s free agency.
“When I was there, he was the whole organization,” Grichuk said. “Obviously, [Mike] Trout was hurt. So he was like, the guy. He’s a huge part of the team when it comes to a marketing standpoint, on-field play standpoint. He’s definitely once in a lifetime.”
Because of that, Ohtani is still expected to receive a warm ovation Tuesday night (Moreno remains the subject of Angel fans’ ire these days).
As Dodgers manager Dave Roberts noted, “them not winning there had nothing to do with [Ohtani’s] performance.”
And as for Ohtani’s free agency?
“I don’t think they were in the conversation,” Roberts added. “So that’s not a slight on Shohei, right?”
Dodgers third base coach Dino Ebel — the only Dodgers staffer who overlapped with Ohtani in Anaheim as the Angels third base coach in his rookie 2018 season — offered a similar assessment.
“He was the face [of the franchise], with Mike Trout,” Ebel said. “I hope [the ovation] is good. I really believe the fans, they love Shohei. And looking back, when he comes up there to lead that game off, I think it’s going to be fun. I expect a standing ovation.”
Maybe if the Angels didn’t collapse this time last year, things would be different.
The slightest taste of postseason contention, many around the sport have speculated, perhaps would have been enough to sway Ohtani to stay.
“We were playing really well … It was like, ‘OK, dang, this is a team,’” Grichuk recalled. “And then we forgot to pitch, forgot to hit. It fell apart.”
Then again, maybe it never would have mattered.
Even if Ohtani wanted to stay, Moreno and the Angels — by declining what was seen as an exceedingly team-friendly contract structure in which $680 million of his salary was deferred — never gave him the chance.
“It’s special to me, and it’s special to play in front of the fans,” Ohtani said of his upcoming return. “I’d like to do my best.”
Only now, his best is benefiting the Southland’s other baseball team.
Twelve months since his last Angels appearance, Ohtani is firmly entrenched as a member of the Dodgers, with Moreno at least partially to thank.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
