Shohei Ohtani doesn’t owe us free agency drama
Shohei Ohtani’s free agency is his, not ours.
Nobody is any closer to truly knowing where Shohei Ohtani will be playing baseball next year. The megastar, the crown jewel of free agency, is keeping everyone in the dark when it comes to his intentions. That’s entirely by design, and while it might be frustrating — it’s also kind of great.
Ohtani’s desire to keep a tight ship when it comes to his decision is antithetical to the 24-hour news cycle, and the feeding frenzy which surrounds free agency in sports. Rather than play up his choice in the media and watch it devolve into a circus, Ohtani is going so far as to warn suitors that if any team so much as leaks details about meeting with him it will affect their chances of signing him. It’s an old-school mindset of keeping business private, and that’s angering a lot of people.
It’s gone so far that veteran baseball writer Buster Olney penned on ESPN that Ohtani keeping his decision private is bad for baseball.
“Just imagine how much better served we all would have been if this window was handled progressively, rather than with paranoia. Just as he has done on the field, Ohtani could have set a new standard — this time for free agent campaigns.”
The question here is who is “all” in this statement? Who really would have been served better if Ohtani allowed this to play out in the media? Olney has an idealistic, dare say naive vision of Ohtani doing a whistle-stop tour of Major League Baseball, praising players and facilities along the way, raising money for charity and leaving morsels as he goes to be gobbled up by rabid fans and reporters. In Olney’s view it’s not Ohtani’s job to simply play baseball, but serve as an ambassador for MLB — to do free PR for teams around the league.
The veteran writer goes on to posit a question about LeBron James and “The Decision” in 2010.
“LeBron James has excelled in his handling of his career, but you wonder if he would broadcast The Decision again, if he had a chance to do it all over again.”
No, we don’t need to wonder. THERE IS NO WAY IN HELL LEBRON WOULD DO THE DECISION AGAIN! In a career full of great moves, it was was unquestionably his biggest misstep. The perception of James morphed that night from being the homegrown star doing right by his home state, to branding him as an ego-obsessed, self-aggrandizing prima donna — and in many ways it kickstarted a segment of basketball fans hating LeBron.
The blowback was so pronounced that LeBron intentionally kept his decision to return to Cleveland low-key, knowing another public event was a bad move. That’s the whole point here, and it got stumbled right into. When you are a league-defining megastar there isn’t room for cute, home-spun visits as part of a goodwill tour. You’re either just pandering to fans, or getting a city’s hopes up for no reason.
As frustrating as Ohtani’s quiet approach to free agency might be, it’s incredibly respectful of everyone’s time. This is a man who desires being a ballplayer more than a brand. Ohtani is clearly very private, and abhors the idea of a circus being around him — so why should he invite it? Sure, it might make for more writing content and a way to fill hours of dead air, but by asking teams to respect his privacy all we’re missing out on is labored speculation about where he might go. This way nobody gets their hopes up, and when he makes his decision then the party can begin.
A great piece of rock and roll miscellany comes from Van Halen in the 1980s. The band had a rider in their tour contract that a bowl of M&Ms had to be backstage in their green room, but that all brown M&Ms had to be removed. It was long-shared tale, spread as a story of ego and excess. Years later David Lee Roth revealed that the band had the rider in the contract to be their canary in a coal mine. If they went backstage and there were brown M&MS in the bowl they knew the venue hadn’t paid attention to the contract, and if they were going to ignore something as minor as a candy preference, then what else did they ignore?
Ohtani’s “no leaking” clause isn’t dissimilar to banning brown M&Ms. It’s a way the star player can know if an employer takes his wishes seriously or not. That might not make for great news, and sure it might frustrate writers looking for more stories in an otherwise boring free agency period — but there’s also something really nice about us all being so in the dark about a superstar’s desires this deep into the process. It’s old school in a very nice way, and when the dust settles nobody can accuse Ohtani of being a prima donna for simply wanting things to be quiet.
Soon he will make his decision. We’ll all get to know where Shohei Ohtani will play baseball in 2024. Until then, it’s not really any of our business. That isn’t a bad thing.