During 2023, Shohei Ohtani will be talked about a lot, and not just for his performance on the pitch. The Japanese superstar will become free as air at the end of the campaign, and clearly, he has something to interest the 30 teams on the circuit.
It will clearly not be the 30 clubs who can afford it, but hey.
Obviously, a return with the Angels is not to be ruled out, but we often hear about the Dodgers, Mets, Mariners and Yankees in the file. There are others (the Giants and the Phillies, for example), but I feel like saying that these are the top five.
However, according to Bob Nightengale, executives within the circuit have another team in mind: the Chicago Cubs.
Why the Cubs? In fact, there would be two main reasons. The first is quite obvious: the club has money and we saw it take out the checkbook last winter, when Dansby Swanson, Jameson Taillon and Cody Bellinger came to town.
Marcus Stroman had also arrived at a high price a year earlier.
But the other reason the Cubs are one to watch is the fact that Ohtani has already had interest in the roster. When he came to America, he had drawn up a list of teams he wanted to play for, a list on which we found teams on the coasts.
That said, the only team that was in a division of the Central (both in the American and the National), it was the Cubs. For some reason, Ohtani was willing to step away from the coast in order to play for the Cubs.
I don’t know if it’s the fact that the formation has a rich history, but obviously, if Ohtani has already had an interest in the Cubs, it cannot be ruled out that this is still the case today.
And clearly, the Cubs are able to recruit talent in Japan, those who signed Seiya Suzuki before the 2022 season.
In short, there is a lot of talk about the big teams in California and New York, but don’t rule out the idea of seeing Ohtani don the Cubs uniform in 2024. And really, that would be a monstrous catch for a team trying to regain their pedigree.
- The Mariners don’t have enough power at the prime hitter position.
- Bad news in LA
