Will The Angels trade Shohei Ohtani before the 2022 MLB trade deadline?

The Los Angles Angels have a pretty impressive outfield, with two of the biggest names in baseball on their roster. Mike Trout may be the best center fielder in the game and the other name, Shohei Ohtani, is perhaps the most versatile. Sometimes outfielder, sometimes designated hitter, sometimes starting pitcher, he works off the mound at All-Star levels, throwing a 2.81 ERA in 99.1 innings, with a 1.02 WHIP and 145 strikeouts.

Any team in the league would want to get their hands on this right-handed pitcher and add him to their rotation. When you factor in his work with the bat, slashing .257/.352/.492 with 21 home runs and 59 RBIs, that statement has to be revised up from “any team would want him” to “every team definitely wants him”.

The chances of him being traded are vanishingly slim, with the Angels understandably reluctant to get rid of the goose that laid the golden egg, but they can never be counted out completely. Any deal can be made for the right price.

The biggest factor in expecting the Angels to deal Shohei is the fact that after the 2023 season, he is due to be free agent, and when you look at his current salary versus players of similar caliber, particularly pitchers, he is grossly underpaid.

His stats from the rubber match, and sometimes exceed, the best arms in the MLB. Hall of Fame shoe-in Max Scherzer, whose .209 ERA over 82.0 innings pitched with a 0.90 WHIP are only slightly better than Ohtani’s, is on $43.3 million per year. Shohei makes $5.5 million.

After walking away with AL MVP honors last year, and looking like a solid candidate to repeat that in 2022, Ohtani has a firm case to make that he should have that balance redressed.

The Angels, if they have any sense about them at all, will likely offer to correct that disparity now, a year before necessary, simply to avoid losing Ohtani. But then the second question comes into play, namely, will Shohei want to stay at a club that has not broken .500 since 2015?

If Ohtani is offered up, the teams that will loom largest in the frame are the Padres, Rangers, Dodgers, Cardinals, and Mariners, with each having a plus and minus for any deal done. While they all have the money, or at least can find it, to make a trade happen, it would require eye-watering amounts of money, and very likely several years of their top prospects to get the Angels to budge.

Angels GM Perry Minasian is reportedly listening to all offers, but says that “The Angels would seek established major leaguers, trying to fulfill their goal of returning to the postseason as quickly as possible.”

This doesn’t necessarily rule out an Ohtani trade, but it makes it more difficult to mark as to just how serious the Angels actually are. They could simply be doing their due diligence, or they could be waiting until Juan Soto is traded and then demand a figure north of whatever he gets as their price for Shohei.

With Ohtani not unhappy in Anaheim, it is more probable that both he and the Angels are using this as a testing of the waters before offering him in the off-season. If that is the case, then the sky truly is the limit.