Shohei Ohtani has been a tremendous success since arriving in Major League Baseball. He has won the Rookie of the Year, two MVP awards, signed the richest contract in league history, and made four All-Star games. The Los Angeles Dodgers star has taken the league by storm. However, when he was with the Los Angeles Angels, his ex-manager Joe Maddon told Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic that he worried about him during the early stages of his career.
“I just didn’t think he had any kind of social life. That was the part that really stood out to me,” Maddon said. “My impression was that he would go back to that apartment in the parking lot of the ballpark. On the road, it was pretty much the same, (hotel) room and back. Was he that married to baseball?”
While it worked out for Ohtani with the Angels, Rosenthal went on to say that he has broken out of his shell with the Dodgers.
His season got off to a rocky start when a report came out that his translator, Ippei Mizuhara, stole millions of dollars from him to cover gambling debts. Ever since, his current manager Dave Roberts and his teammates have said that he has spoken English around the locker room more. Ohtani's growing comfort in the US has not changed his output on the diamond, which has been everything the Dodgers could have hoped for.
Shohei Ohtani shines with the Dodgers
Shohei Ohtani is recovering from Tommy John surgery and cannot pitch for the entire season. The injury is not keeping him from crushing it at the plate once again. He entered Tuesday's action leading the National League in runs scored, slugging percentage, OPS, and home runs. He hit the first All-Star Game home run for the Dodgers since 1996 and is the odds-on favorite to win the NL MVP. His first season in Dodger Blue has gone exactly to plan and his value is set to expand next season.
Assuming he makes a full recovery from Tommy John, Ohtani is set to pitch for the Dodgers in 2025. He will join a rotation headlined by Tyler Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto to create one of the best groups in baseball. Much of the value the Dodgers paid for comes from his two-way ability and he will cash in on that next year.
The Dodgers have also reaped the benefits of Ohtani's incredible popularity. He entered the All-Star Break atop the list of jersey sales for 2024. His Angels jersey finished 2023 on top as well. He stars in commercials, appears on billboards, and draws fans to opposing stadiums unlike any other player in the MLB today and few others in all of sports.
Ohtani is a generational talent, proven by his season on and off the field in 2024. The player who Joe Maddon was once so worried about has now broken out of his shell and continued his meteoric rise. Baseball is still his life, but Ohtani's continued progression off the field will only make him a bigger star.
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