Now the bleak reconstruction begins for the Los Angeles Angels, who tried just about everything they could to convince Shohei Ohtani to stay. They took him off the trade market in 2022 and again in 2023, when conventional wisdom suggested they should deal him to get proper value. They made aggressive trades from an already thin farm system last summer, to demonstrate to him that they were trying to win. Throughout the bidding process, the Angels thought they had at least a shot to re-sign, because they had deferred to him over and over.
Every major decision that the Angels made in the last couple of years was made with a view toward Ohtani's situation, in keeping open the possibility of retaining him.