by Paul Teetor
Will he stay or will he go?
That is the biggest question right now in all of Los Angeles sports, and it applies to two of our biggest SoCal superstars: Shohei Ohtani, the 21st Century Babe Ruth, and USC quarterback Caleb Williams, who may or may not be the next Patrick Mahomes.
In this case, All Ball has all the answers. We do all the work so you can be the first one on your walk street with advance intel on the pressing issues of the sporting day.
So let’s start with the most imminent case, that of Ohtani, baseball’s biggest star and the only player since Babe Ruth to excel in both hitting and pitching.
In 1920, the New York Yankees stole him from the Boston Red Sox for a theater ticket and a couple of starlets to be named later. Then they forced the Babe to choose between pitching and hitting. Ruth liked pitching, but he loved hitting and so he made the practical choice to play every day — something Ohtani has fiercely resisted and will continue to resist.
And that is part of the intrigue surrounding Ohtani’s search for a new team. Even though he injured his elbow late in the season and will apparently be unable to pitch next season while he recovers from Tommy John surgery, he continued to bat for the Angels this season and will be a hitter exclusively next season while planning to resume his double duties in 2025.
So that becomes an important criterion for him signing with a new team: will they work with him to ensure that his rehab ends with him both hitting and pitching on a regular basis?
It’s really a two-part question.
Part one: will Ohtani leave the Angels?
The answer to that is absolutely, positively yes.
It’s a no-brainer.
Why?
Ohtani has frequently said that his highest priority is to win a World Series title. The Angels have had six years to fulfill that desire and haven’t come close. Despite having the best one-two punch in either league in Ohtani and Mike Trout for the entire six years, they haven’t even made the playoffs since he joined them.
And now, even with Trout stuck there on a long-term contract, the Angels have a bad big-league roster, a depleted farm system, and more than $140 million on the books for next season already.
But aside from all that inside baseball stuff, simple common sense says he’s leaving the Angels. If he wanted to stay, he could have long ago announced that desire. The Angels and owner Arte Moreno would have offered him the $500 to 600 million it’s going to take to sign him, and we wouldn’t be going through the current guessing game about his next team.
The problem with Moreno as an owner isn’t cash – it’s competence.
Degree of confidence in All Ball’s answer: 100 percent.
So that leaves the second, and more intriguing question: Once he leaves the Angels, is he coming to the Dodgers?
All Ball first predicted he would end up in LA with the Dodgers three years ago (No, Anaheim is not part of LA, no matter what Moreno wants us to think) and we’re sticking with that prediction now.
We should know the answer very soon, perhaps within the week, perhaps even by the time you read this. Major League Baseball’s annual Winter Meetings, usually the busiest part of the offseason, began on Sunday in Nashville.
Remember, Ohtani could have signed with any team in the major leagues five days after the World Series ended, so these last three weeks of radio silence on the Ohtani front mean that there’s some serious bidding going on right now.
And now all of the league’s top decision makers and agents will be holed up in hotel suites in Nashville, with nothing better to do than make deals, gossip about who’s making deals, and sign free agents.
The Ohtani bidding process has largely been kept hidden from the media and the public, but there are credible reports that three teams are finalists: the Dodgers, the Chicago Cubs, and the Toronto Blue Jays. Big market teams like the Yankees, Mets, Giants and Red Sox apparently have concluded that the bidding is too rich for them.
So why does All Ball believe the Dodgers ultimately will prevail? For the same reasons we first cited three years ago.
First of all, the organization tried to sign Ohtani out of high school, and Dodgers President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman later gave chase when Ohtani first came to MLB. (The Dodgers were reportedly a finalist then too.)
More important, they check all of the boxes: location, cash – it will take up to $600 million, or even more — and the track record to prove that they are contenders every single year.
The Dodgers have the financial means to sign Ohtani to a huge, long-term contract after seemingly planning for this the past couple winters by giving out only short-term deals.
Second, they have the best on-field team of the three finalists, and it ain’t close. They’ve made the playoffs the last 11 years, and are a lock to make them next year — with or without Ohtani.
It should be the Dodgers, and it shouldn’t even be a close call.
Degree of confidence in All Ball’s prediction: 90 percent.
If he signs anywhere else, it will mean Friedman screwed up big-time.
Hot Rod Lincoln Breaks Down
And then there is the case of Caleb Williams, the USC quarterback who won the Heisman Trophy last year and missed out on competing for the college football championship only because USC’s defense collapsed at the end of the year.
It was supposed to be – and looked like — the start of a new USC dynasty under Coach Lincoln Riley, who brought Williams with him from Oklahoma.
But after a 6-0 start this year, everything fell apart.
The fatal flaw: Riley also brought defensive coordinator Alex Grinch with him from Oklahoma, and he never got the defense up to speed where it could compete in a terrifically competitive PAC -12.
No matter how many points Williams generated – and it was a lot – it was never enough to beat the likes of Utah, Oregon and Washington. Grinch was fired last month, but by then the whole “instant dynasty” fairy tale was over and Riley was going to have to face the move to the Big-10 without his safety blanket in Williams.
For the record, Williams told the press last month that it would be a “game-time” decision on whether or not he declares for the NFL Draft.
Technically, that means he will probably wait for the January 15 deadline for underclassmen to declare for the draft.
Realistically, that was just a glib way for him to avoid the question until the last minute. He’s going to be the first or second overall pick in the NFL Draft, and he’d be crazy to forsake that in favor of another year at USC.
So make no mistake: he is leaving USC, which means Riley is going to have to start over in terms of building an offense without the best quarterback in the country while at the same time rebuilding the defense.
Gulp.
The Lincoln Riley honeymoon ended late last year and by the end of this season was heading towards a very expensive divorce. He has eight years left on his contract, but really only one year if he doesn’t do well in the Big-10 (really the Big-16) without Williams.
Good luck with that, Coach.
Degree of Confidence in the All Ball prediction: 99.9 percent.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com
Follow: @paulteetor
