A’s Appear Unlikely To Land Ohtani

The baseball world is all atwitter — sorry, Elon, I mean all a-X — over where Shohei Ohtani might be announcing he is signing a contract that figures to exceed 1/2 a billion dollars. Ohtani has played it close to the vest throughout, even letting teams know that should his presence in town be leaked he will hold it against that team in negotiations.

As a result, we have little knowledge of what Ohtani is thinking or where he is located. It is a bit of a game of “Where In The World In Carmen Sandiego,” which should not be confused with the idea he is about to sign with the Padres. It is also a touch of “Where’s Waldo” only the hat doesn’t have that puffy ball of string on the top.

The bottom line is that the A’s haven’t exactly been ruled out so much as it has been assumed that Ohtani isn’t about to sign with the only west coast team he snubbed the first time around, a team whose season payroll figures to be less than Ohtani’s salary alone, a team that is currently quite literally homeless for years 2, 3, and 4 of his new contract, and which came in 2nd place in 112 of its games last season.

And appears to be slashing payroll further, because the whole point of getting revenue sharing is to pocket it and ignore improving the on field product, right? That’s why owners have worked so diligently to make sure the A’s continue getting revenue sharing even if it means moving from a big market to a tiny one, waiving the relocation fee, alienating an entire fan base, and having really no plan for 3 years in between.

Nonetheless, we are going on assumptions and as we learned in the Bad News Bears, assumptions make an ass out of u and mption. (OK it’s been a while since I saw the movie; I might be botching the quote a tad.)

There are merely indicators that the A’s are not finalists in the Ohtani sweepstakes, such as:

• Internet sleuths have been unable to locate Ohtani’s name on any private flights from Anaheim to Oakland or from Japan to Oakland.
• No receipts at Fatapple’s have surfaced bearing the signature of Billy Beane, David Forst, Mark Kotsay, or Ohtani (would might have had to pay the bill based on the A’s current budget).
• Ohtani is not on record anywhere as viewing homelessness as desirable, charming, or fun.
• It is rumored that Ohtani is keeping his dog’s name secret because it refers to his new team, and no veterinarian in the U.S. has on record a canine patient named “Athletics”. (Note that one of the real names of one of the dogs featured in the long running British series “Doc Martin” is named Dodger. Just saying.)

So what I’m comfortable saying, at this snapshot in time, is that Shohei Ohtani does not appear to be poised to sign a contract with the A’s in the next 24 hours. You heard it here first.