At some point, you kinda bow out because you know all you are is a vehicle for an agent ( like … maybe that’s what the not-precisely-correct-but-maybe-mostly-true reporting about the Cubs being out was?). Easy enough to imagine the Cubs and others floating the deals they would be willing to do, but never quite getting a sense that Ohtani would bite. Maybe the other suitors were never going to go nuts with the cash until and unless they felt like they had a real chance to get him with the right deal. Throw in the fact that the Dodgers structured their last two years around the idea that they wanted to be in a financial position to go after Ohtani, and I just wonder if this whole thing was a farce from the jump. There was reason to believe Ohtani’s strong, strong preference was to stay in Southern California all along, and since the Angels can’t win a thing with him, it made all the sense in the world that the Dodgers would be his number one preference. Maybe Ohtani Was Never Actually Gettable from the Dodgers The goal was to get the right price from the Dodgers. It felt – this is just an outsider observing – like maybe Ohtani was willing to go to the Jays if a preferred team didn’t come close to the offer they were making, but that wasn’t the goal. That’s how it is going to look in hindsight, but for what it’s worth, I was saying it in foresight.

Were the Blue Jays ever actually close to getting Shohei Ohtani? We know the Toronto flight stuff was bogus, but … did it come from somewhere? Like, did Ohtani’s camp maybe very carefully and strategically and successfully use the right tools to get the Dodgers to up their offer to the right range? It sucks that this incredible, once-in-a-lifetime thing didn’t happen, but it didn’t happen for 29 teams.

The Cubs have to proceed with a “normal” offseason from here. I mean that in two ways: I mean that in terms of how much more exciting and fun it would be to have Ohtani on “your” team, but also in terms of how Ohtani is just his entirely own bucket in all ways. You cannot evaluate whatever the Cubs do next by comparing it to signing Ohtani. Which means, in turn, that you can’t just say, “ope, well, we didn’t get this unicorn player, so on to the next unicorn player.” Ohtani is a one-off.

Closest casino to angels camp ca