Shohei Ohtani’s Season Ends Early: Will He Return to the Angels?

Shohei Ohtani’s season ended early two weeks before the end of the regular season. The celebrated baseball star of the Los Angeles Angels will have to miss the coming weeks due to injury.

Has he possibly already played his last game for the Los Angeles Angels? Shohei Ohtani. Getty Images

At the trade deadline, the Angels threw everything into the balance to launch an attack on the play-offs and thus make their star players Ohtani and Mike Trout happy. This project failed miserably.

The Angels have lost 29 of their 41 games since the beginning of August and therefore only have a theoretical chance of making the postseason. The team from Anaheim, a city just outside Los Angeles, is threatened with the departure of Ohtani, who will become a free agent in the winter and sign a lucrative contract. And perhaps not with the Angels, who have not managed to build a real title contender around perhaps the best player in baseball history in any of his six seasons in the MLB so far.

What makes Ohtani so special are his outstanding qualities as both a hitter and a pitcher. His two-way skills make him unique in baseball, earning him the nickname “Unicorn.” Ohtani is considered the favorite to win the American League Most Valuable Player Award, which would be his second MVP award after 2021.

Has Ohtani already played his last game for the Angels?

However, Angels fans may have already seen him for the last time in the jersey of their favorite team. As the Angels announced on Saturday, Ohtani will not play again this season due to injury.

The 29-year-old Japanese had already missed the last eleven games due to a strained abdominal muscle, and he had not played as a pitcher since the end of August due to an elbow injury. Ohtani will soon undergo surgery on his right elbow.

Ohtani wants to continue as a two-way player

His agent Nez Balelo had already announced at the beginning of September that Ohtani planned to return as a two-way player in the future despite the injuries and to at least be fit again as a batsman in time for the 2024 season. In the current season he led the American League with 44 home runs with a batting average of 30.4 percent. He also recorded 167 strikeouts as a pitcher. He also leads the league in many advanced stats.

It is currently unclear to what extent the injuries will affect Ohtani’s free agency. At the beginning of August, league insiders expected that he would be offered at least $500 million for around ten years; some even expected the new contract to have a total volume of around $600 million, which would make him a record earner. Many teams will continue to be willing to invest immense amounts of money in Ohtani.

2023-09-17 02:14:58
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