SAN DIEGO — The designated hitter did not exist in the National League on Dec. 5, 2017, the day the Padres met with Shohei Ohtani at Creative Artists Agency headquarters in Los Angeles. The team officials who had traveled up from San Diego still did what they could to make an impression on the most unique free agent in baseball history.
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A.J. Preller recited from memory a roughly five-minute spiel in Japanese, a language the general manager otherwise hardly knew. Joining Preller in the room, among others, were owners Ron Fowler and Peter Seidler, then-manager Andy Green, Hall of Famer Trevor Hoffman and several Padres employees with ties to Ohtani: Hideo Nomo, Takashi Saito, Acey Kohrogi and former Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters trainer Seiichiro Nakagaki, whom Preller had hired months earlier. The envoy presented Ohtani with a booklet printed in both English and Japanese, touting the comforts of their home city, the young talent in their farm system and a detailed proposal to use the two-way star as both a pitcher and a part-time outfielder.
Three days later, Ohtani announced he was signing with the Los Angeles Angels. Despite the mystery shrouding his motivations and San Diego’s apparent disadvantage as a National League team, the Padres likely felt as much disappointment as any of the other five clubs — the Chicago Cubs, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, Seattle Mariners and Texas Rangers — that had been granted an audience with Ohtani. No GM chases a splash as doggedly as Preller, who would sign Eric Hosmer to an eight-year, $144 million deal the following February.
Now, a half-decade later, hosting Ohtani at Petco Park is a reminder of how far the franchise has come — and how challenging another pursuit could be.
The Padres surely had envisioned they would be far higher in the standings with the best player in the world in town on a picturesque Monday night. During what was conveniently marketed as a “Japanese Heritage Celebration,” an announced crowd of 45,101 watched as San Diego sailed to a 10-3 win and continued averaging a sellout per game in their jewel of a stadium. Yet the victory merely improved the home team’s record to seven games under .500 in July, an obvious red flag four weeks before the trade deadline and four months before the start of Ohtani’s widely anticipated free agency.
A 3-run Bogey Blast™️#BringTheGold
— San Diego Padres (@Padres) July 4, 2023
It was just last October that this ballpark hosted an unforgettable National League Division Series and then a Championship Series that left San Diego eliminated but thirsting for more. The Padres, who experienced the 2020 pandemic postseason, have gone to the playoffs in two of the past three years — or two more times than Ohtani and fellow superstar Mike Trout have gone to the postseason since the former arrived in the majors. In recent months, Seidler continued out-spending Angels counterpart Arte Moreno, and the vast majority of the league, by lavishing contracts totaling $818 million on Manny Machado, Xander Bogaerts, Jake Cronenworth and Yu Darvish, Ohtani’s World Baseball Classic teammate.
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Since Preller’s first full season as GM, however, the Padres have also experienced second-half collapses in 2019 and 2021 that called into question the leadership inside the clubhouse; fired three full-time managers; parted with many more coaches and gone 39-46 this season with the sport’s third-largest payroll.
The Angels, since 2018, have compiled a 373-422 regular-season record. The Padres, in the same time frame, have gone 380-413. Both franchises, in spite of significant investments, have often suffered from top-heavy rosters and a lack of useful depth. While Ohtani’s preferences remain mostly mysterious, an organization such as the Dodgers — that apparently curbed their outlier spending in preparation for the ultimate bidding war — could offer him the cleanest path to what everyone believes he wants: an environment conducive to perennial postseason play.
The Angels and Padres, of course, could yet change the narratives that have trailed them. The other team in “Los Angeles” is playing above-.500 baseball and retaining some hope of re-signing Ohtani. The Padres, under Seidler, have proven their willingness to spend vast sums of money and cater to star players who follow unique routines that can be disrupted by poor weather. (Petco Park has seen just three rainouts in its history and none since 2017.) Although some in the industry say some Japanese players could be uncomfortable being major-league teammates with fellow Japanese players due to the importance of seniority in Japan’s hierarchical culture, Darvish and Ohtani appeared to coexist just fine, at least for a few weeks in March, while delivering a WBC championship to their home country.
Maybe the Padres’ performance this year will dissuade Seidler, who is already facing industry-wide doubts regarding his ability to fund a top payroll without taking on more debt. Almost everyone in the sport believes Ohtani will merit baseball’s first $500 million contract, with $600 million seemingly in play.
And maybe almost nothing will keep Seidler and the Padres from chasing the most coveted free agent in history, especially if their hopes of extending Scott Boras client Juan Soto are fading amid a massively disappointing season. If San Diego misses the playoffs after an epic, season-long collapse, no move would assuage the fan base as much as landing Ohtani, a perennial MVP candidate and global icon who is said to have brought in tens of millions of additional revenue for the Angels.
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After all, it was just last summer that the Padres again pursued Ohtani in a quixotic quest. League sources said, before the Angels expectedly declined to trade Ohtani, San Diego was willing to discuss some of the same heralded prospects they later dealt in their blockbuster acquisition of Soto. The Padres also did not shy away from including the likes of Blake Snell in the talks, however brief those ultimately were.
Monday, under the circumstances, went about as well as the Padres could have hoped. Their high-priced star hitters performed: Soto scored three runs, Fernando Tatis Jr. notched three hits, Machado and Cronenworth each collected two hits, and Bogaerts finished a triple shy of the cycle in his best night of the season. Snell, the newly named National League Pitcher of the Month, pitched around frequent traffic to complete five scoreless innings. On the other side, Ohtani walked twice but was held without a hit or a run scored. The Padres stranded 14 Angels base runners and savored a homestand-opening win after a 1-5 slog through Pittsburgh and Cincinnati.
“That was miserable. A really miserable trip,” manager Bob Melvin said. “Feel-good game tonight and got a pretty good pitcher against us tomorrow. So we’ll go out there with a little bit more confidence obviously than we did if we lost tonight’s game.”
Tuesday’s pretty good opposing starter is none other than Ohtani, who has never pitched against the Padres in a non-Cactus League game and who had this start pushed back a day because of a cracked fingernail. The injury encouraged the Angels to pull Ohtani from his June 27 outing, but not before he had struck out 10 over 6 1/3 innings of one-run baseball. Later that same game, he launched his second home run of the night as a DH. And over the next four days, he swatted three more home runs to maintain his major-league lead in that category.
“I mean, this is crazy. It’s funny. I looked at, like, his team stats. He leads all the hitting, all the pitching,” Snell said. “For him to pitch tomorrow is crazy. … Even just hitting in 2019 (with no DH in the National League), I hated that. So I don’t get how he’s — he’s good, so I can see how he enjoys it. But it’s a lot.”
It is, and it explains why multiple teams plan to bid ridiculous amounts of money this winter for Ohtani’s services. Where will the Padres be as an organization then? A lot can change in a few months. A lot has already changed since April, and not in a good way. Tuesday, the most freakish two-way talent to ever grace a baseball diamond will again stand in the way of a chance at building some desperately needed momentum. The Padres, meanwhile, will again try to incrementally prove they are better than their record with the trade deadline approaching and a high-stakes free agency looming beyond that.
Before Monday’s game, the lone San Diego position player selected to join Ohtani in the All-Star Game was asked about the latest remarkable season in Ohtani’s remarkable career.
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“It’s impressive, but he’s gonna have trouble to face this lineup tomorrow, definitely,” Soto said. “I mean, I’m coming here to play baseball. We all know he’s an impressive player, but whenever he steps on that mound, I won’t be scared to shuffle on his ass.”
Soto laughed. A mixture of confidence and humor, at this point in the season, might be the Padres’ best path to a turnaround.
(Top photo of Shohei Ohtani reacting during an at-bat against the Padres on Monday: Orlando Ramirez / USA Today)
