Being right a decade ago about Shohei Ohtani’s greatness hasn’t prevented A.J. Preller and the Padres from suffering much pain caused by the Japanese star.
Another stiff bill came due Wednesday night, this time in the East Village.
Tasked with opposing the Full Ohtani, the Padres saw the well-grooved, built-up 31-year-old hit a long home run off the game’s first pitch and toss five scoreless innings.
By signing with the Dodgers three offseasons ago and recruiting other stars with his baseball-playing and pleas to join him in L.A., Ohtani has transformed a formidable Padres rival into the National League’s most powerful franchise in several decades.
There’s more.
Becoming a force multiplier like no other in modern baseball, the 31-year-old Ohtani has provided the Dodgers astounding financial leverage by deferring most of his $700-million contract and generating revenues that team executives said far exceed their own bright forecasts.
No wonder the Dodgers, who widened their National League West over the Padres to 1 1/2 games, have won the World Series in each of their two years.
Preller’s Padres have done what they could the past two years, earning two wild-card berths and pushing the ‘24 Dodgers to a pair of elimination games in the Division Series.
This year’s team, defying all preseason projections, stands nine games above sea level as the season’s one-third mark draws near.
But as Ohtani displayed before an announced crowd of 41,888 Wednesday night, there’s nobody in baseball who can match the dual prowess of a lefty hitter who on this night drove Randy Vásquez’s 96-mph fastball some 410 feet for a 1-0 lead and a righty pitcher who fired triple-digit fastballs and up to six other pitches led by crisp sweepers.
The home run? It was Ohtani’s eighth, to go with an on-base rate of .401.
His ERA through eight starts? A 0.73 mark that could portend a first Cy Young award for the four-time MVP.
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Padres hitters, led by No. 2 hitter Miguel Andujar, who had an 11-pitch strikeout in his first chance, did succeed at taxing Ohtani.
He threw 22 pitches in the first inning and 18 more a few innings later.
Essentially, though, Ohtani’s two-way excellence staked L.A. to a 3-0 lead through five frames, when Dodgers manager Dave Roberts went to his bullpen.
If Preller was watching, he was no doubt unsurprised by Ohtani behaving like a superhero,
The Padres’ president of baseball operations worked hard to build the Padres’ connections to Japan and South Korea, and saw enough in Ohtani to learn Japanese phrases and recruit him in his native tongue.
As part of the same pitch, Ohtani heard from two countrymen Preller had hired: Hideo Nomo, the Japanese pitching star who’d conquered the American big leagues; and Seiichiro Nakagaki, the player’s former physical trainer.
It was a great try. And likely futile.
Ohtani wanted to hit and pitch.
The National League lacked the designated hitter at the time, giving the Angels a huge advantage.
Nor did Preller have much of a shot six years later, despite having locked up one of Ohtani’s favorite baseball players and countrymen in pitcher Yu Darvish.
The Dodgers represented a much better chance for Ohtani to contend for the World Series every year after never reaching the playoffs in his six years with the Angels.
Improving those chances after joining the Dodgers, Ohtani recruited ace pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, whose envelope-pushing World Series tournament and Game 7 at Toronto were instrumental in L.A. becoming the first NL team to win consecutive Fall Classic since the mid-1970s Reds.
The Padres will press on, sharpened in some way, no doubt, by having faced a Dodgers team that lined up its best pitcher for the three-game set.
Several Padres players fared well. Michael King tossed seven innings in the 1-0 win on Monday. Andujar and Manny Machado hit home runs in the 5-4 loss Tuesday.
But, Preller’s pursuits of Ohtani notwithstanding, L.A. is once again setting a very high standard.