For better or worse, the Los Angeles Angels will always have a strong, almost automatic connection with two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani, and it surfaced once again in some playful comments Ohtani made as he gets ready to join Samurai Japan for the World Baseball Classic, according to a story written by Sonja Chen of MLB.com.
Ohtani won’t be pitching in the WBC, as he’s been shut down due to his second major surgery on his right elbow. He doesn’t exactly like this, of course, but he does understand, and over the weekend he was asked there was any kind of exception situation that would get him to take the mound for Samurai Japan.
"Hard to say it," Ohtani said Sunday through interpreter Will Ireton, "but if [Mike] Trout shows up, it's tempting."
Trout won’t be suiting up for the classic, of course, and his absence is also health- related. He was denied insurance coverage for the WBC because of his balky knees, but the two former teammates were responsible for one of the most electric moments in the brief history of the International classic.
It happened back in 2023, when Ohtani struck out his then-Angels teammate to clinch the victory for Japan in the title game. It’s a defining moment in recent baseball history, but since then their careers have gone in decidedly opposite directions.
Ohtani signed with the Los Angels Dodgers, and he led the Angels' cross-freeway rivals to back-to-back World Series titles. Trout, meanwhile, continues to struggle with injuries, although he does want to try to play center field this season for the Angels.
His insurance situation would suggest that this is a bad idea, but things like that don’t stop the Angels from making questionable moves that boomerang on them. Reinstalling Trout in the outfield could end up being one of the worse, as the former superstar was able to hit 26 home runs last season as a full-time DH, including the 400th homer of his career.
As amazing as Ohtani has been, his pitching career hasn’t exactly gone well, either. He’s brilliant when he’s on the mound, but the Dodgers have been forced to nurse him along after injuries to actually get him there.
Trout and Ohtani will face each other again fairly soon, however. The two teams square off annually in a pair of three-game sets, and the Angels actually managed to sweep the Dodgers last year, which was small consolation in a season where just about everything else went wrong to at least some degree.