Every human body is a marvel, an intricate machine working tirelessly to keep us going.
More often than not, we take for granted everything a healthy body enables us to do, until ability is taken away from us.
Clearly, Shohei Ohtani doesn’t have the body of a mere mortal. Like Red Sox-era Babe Ruth and Yankees-era Babe Ruth rolled into one, Ohtani is the greatest, only true two-way player in Major League Baseball history. He’s broken the baseball mold, and the rest of us can only give thanks that we’re alive to bear witness.
That’s also why it’s so stunning and heartbreaking when he gets hurt.
It’s difficult to comprehend that the very body that’s made Ohtani an unparalleled talent can break down like anyone else’s, but even the greatest warriors aren’t invincible. Superman had Kryptonite. Achilles, a heel. For Ohtani, it’s an elbow.
Late Wednesday night, Los Angeles Angels general manager Perry Minasian announced that Ohtani suffered a tear in his right elbow’s ulnar collateral ligament and won’t pitch again this year. In the coming days, he’ll consult with the experts and explore his options, including Tommy John surgery (for the second time), which would keep him off the mound for all of 2024.
The Red Sox should want him anyway. Every team should.
In recent years, the Red Sox have lost too many pitchers to injuries, and that will certainly give them pause. But even as a one-way player, Ohtani is stellar. Over the last three years, he’s averaged 146 games, 147 hits, 26 doubles, seven triples, 41 home runs, 97 runs, 95 RBI, and 18 stolen bases. Entering Thursday, he’s hitting .304 with 142 hits in 126 games. He leads the American League in runs (97) and walks (78), and leads all MLB hitters with seven triples, the aforementioned 44 round-trippers, a .664 slugging percentage, 1.069 OPS, 183 OPS+, and 310 total bases, six more than he had in 157 games last season.
On Wednesday, the 29-year-old Japanese phenom exited his start in the second inning, just four outs and 26 pitches into Game 1 of a doubleheader against the Cincinnati Reds. Yet even after an MRI told him what was happening inside his arm, he played Game 2 as the designated hitter, and went 1-for-5 with a double.
It’s yet unclear how this injury will impact Ohtani’s upcoming free agency. MLB offseasons sometimes drag on at a snail’s pace, with nary a big splash until the very end. But this winter promised something different: A feverish, frenetic bidding war the likes of which America’s Pastime had never seen, for a player unlike any other. It seemed a foregone conclusion that the superstar would become the first $500 million player in MLB history, and even that number seemed low.
The Red Sox can afford him.
Every team can (yes, even the ones who keep their payrolls small) but especially the Red Sox, whom Forbes deemed the third-most valuable MLB team. They’ve also stayed under the luxury tax threshold this season, so the penalties will reset this fall. Not that that should even matter, especially in the context of a once-in-a-lifetime player.
Excluding any potential options to be exercised, the Red Sox only have $134.3 million in guaranteed contracts on next year’s payroll. They have no more than $80.6 million committed between 2025-27, and beyond that, there’s just Rafael Devers.
By comparison, the Yankees have at least $108.8 million in guaranteed contracts on the books each season until 2028.
There’s also something that sets the Red Sox apart from any other Ohtani suitor, one of cosmic, mystical, intangible proportions.
They’ve let other great players pass them by. They’ve even served up some of the best to ever wear their uniform on a silver platter to teams who couldn’t believe their luck. None of those players were Shohei Ohtani, and there may never be a player like him again; he is one of one.
Bostonians probably shared similar sentiments about Babe Ruth in 1919, when he led the Majors with 29 home runs and 103 runs while posting a 2.97 ERA over 17 games as a pitcher, only to have Harry Frazee sell him to the Yankees.
A little over a century later, the Red Sox have a chance, perhaps the only chance they’ll ever get, to correct that mistake and sign Ohtani, who is even more Ruthian than Ruth himself. (The Sultan of Swat only pitched five more times once he went to New York.)
After that 86-year Curse of the Bambino, no Red Sox fan born before 2004 should scoff at that.
But above all, the Red Sox should try to sign Ohtani because he’s supremely talented and will make them better.
And because they can.