Dave Roberts confirms Dodgers met with Shohei Ohtani, to the surprise of team officials
The Dodgers held a meeting with two-way star Shohei Ohtani at Dodger Stadium last week, manager Dave Roberts revealed Tuesday at Major League Baseball’s winter meetings, marking the biggest on-the-record development in a free-agent pursuit that had previously been shrouded in secrecy and speculation.
“Yeah, we met with him,” Roberts said. “I like to be honest, so yeah, we met with Shohei.”
According to Roberts, Dodgers officials spent two to three hours with Ohtani, who last month won his second American League most valuable player award with the Angels.
Roberts described the session as lower-key than the sides’ meeting in 2017, when Ohtani was first coming to MLB from Japan. No Dodgers players were present. And, while Roberts was unsure of exactly what Ohtani thought, he remained confident in the Dodgers’ ability to land him.
Don’t expect the two-way superstar to announce who he’s signing with like LeBron James did with “The Decision.”
“Clearly,” Roberts said, “Shohei is our top priority.”
Since the start of Ohtani’s free agency last month, fellow MLB managers and executives had been wary of even speaking about the star player by name — let alone discussing the details of any meetings their teams might have had.
The belief around the industry has been that such leaks could be held against teams.
Roberts, however, said he wanted to answer honestly to this winter meeting’s most pressing question.
“I don’t feel like lying is something I do,” he said. “I was asked a question. And yeah, I think to be forthright in this situation, we kept it quiet. But it’s gonna come out at some point that we met. … So I don’t think myself or anyone else in our organization would want to lie about it.”
The Dodgers’ meeting with Ohtani was not the first to become public knowledge.
On Monday, news leaked in various media reports the 29-year-old had toured the Toronto Blue Jays’ spring training facility that afternoon, and that he had recently traveled to San Francisco to meet with the Giants.
The Chicago Cubs have also been linked heavily to Ohtani. A potential return to the Angels is still believed to be possible. And the Dodgers’ interest in Ohtani has been clear for weeks, if not longer — even though Ohtani won’t be able to pitch again until 2025 after undergoing Tommy John surgery in September.
Roberts, however, became the first official from a team to publicly disclose a meeting with Ohtani — comments that clearly caught members of the Dodgers’ organization off guard.
The moment Roberts’ news conference ended, the manager huddled with three members of the team’s public relations staff for several minutes in deep discussion.
He was then whisked away to another part of the Gaylord Opryland hotel — the site of this year’s meetings, outside of downtown Nashville — while being trailed by several Japanese television crews.
Later in the afternoon, both president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and general manager Brandon Gomes declined to discuss the Ohtani meeting, saying they weren’t allowed to talk about current free agents.
“Dave made a comment,” Gomes said, “and we are, just for us personally, don’t feel comfortable going into it any further.”
Has Gomes found the top-secret nature of Ohtani’s free agency, which is being led by agent Nez Balelo of Creative Artists Agency, to be strange given he’s one of the sport’s most popular players?
“I think anybody that has earned the right to be a free agent,” he responded, “should handle it the way they want to.”
Ohtani’s free agency has both dominated the headlines this winter and largely stalled the rest of the free-agent market. Teams and agents of other players (especially hitters) alike are seemingly waiting on him to sign what is expected to be an MLB-record-breaking contract of potentially $500 million or more.
Whether the Dodgers’ chances of landing Ohtani were impacted by Tuesday’s disclosure of their meeting with him remains to be seen.
While there was certainly surprise among officials within the club at Roberts’ comments, there weren’t any signs of outright panic.
Shortly after Roberts’ news conference, Friedman emerged from a conference room meeting in seemingly OK spirits, chuckling during conversations with rival executives.
Gomes, when asked in a scrum whether the Dodgers’ chances of signing Ohtani were impacted by Tuesday’s developments, claimed he had “no idea” and that the process would “play out how it’s going to play out.”
Betts, a six-time Gold Glove winner in right field, split his time between the outfield and infield in 2023.
“I was surprised,” Gomes said of his initial reaction to seeing Roberts’ comments. “But like I said, I’m not going to go into any kind of detail on exactly how things played out.”
Roberts also declined to divulge the content of the team’s meeting-room pitch to Ohtani.
“I think it was more [about] just getting more familiar with him,” Roberts said. “He had questions for us, just trying to get more of the landscape. But being in this league for six years he’s got a pretty good idea of the Dodgers, what we’re about, the city itself. So, for me, and speaking for our guys, it was just a pleasure to get to spend some time with him.”
How confident was Roberts the Dodgers could win the Ohtani sweepstakes?
“I feel good about it,” he said. “But, again, you know, he’s his own man, which we all respect.”
So starved were reporters for long-awaited details of Ohtani’s free agency, Roberts was even asked at one point if Ohtani was smiling during the meeting.
“He has a very good poker face,” the manager said with a laugh. “I think he was smiling inside. But I was just happy to spend some time with him. We all were.”
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