Mike Trout Breaks Hand, Shattering Hope of Shohei Ohtani Making Playoffs This Season
It has come to my attention that the Angels may actually be cursed.
If you’ve been reading my newsletters since at least March, you know I’ve been singlehandedly trying to will the Angels into making the playoffs this season.
Shohei Ohtani has now proven himself to be the best baseball player who ever lived. I don’t need to see anymore. He is the guy. I need him in the postseason. We need him in the postseason.
Yet, because he’s been stuck in Anaheim for the past six years, he’s never sniffed October baseball. Not one inning on the mound. Not one plate appearance. Not one dugout smile or postseason TV promo with his handsome face splashed across it. Nothing.
Imagine if Michael Jordan never made the playoffs? Bill Russell? Tom Brady? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar? LeBron James? Babe Ruth? Mickey Mantle?
Then ask yourself: WHAT ARE WE DOING HERE?
If I were Rob Manfred I would strongly consider creating another special “Ohtani rule” wherein the playoff team with the worst record each year gets to add him to their roster just for fun. Who would say no?
The Angels, obviously, but they shouldn’t get a vote at this point, given how they squandered the prime of the guy who could singlehandedly bring baseball back to the popularity it enjoyed for a century until the steroid crisis from 20 years ago (disastrously timed with LeBron James’ arrival) saw the NBA surpass MLB in interest and cultural relevance for young people.
Ohtani is the savior we need and deserve. But he’s been stuck on a team that hasn’t made the playoffs since 2014, when he was a teenager still living in Japan.
The Angels making the playoffs this year was always going to require many things to break right, as they play in the same division with the reigning world champion Houston Astros and an upstart Texas Rangers team that demolishes baseballs like Joey Chestnut demolishes hot dogs. But, given how dreadful the AL Central is, and how so many talented AL East teams like the Yankees and Red Sox and Blue Jays have been frustrating and underachieving this year, a wild-card spot for the Angels *was* possible.
That is, until the 8th inning on Monday night, when Mike Trout fouled a ball off his hand and something broke wrong. Specifically, Trout’s hamate bone. The Angels were losing 9-3. The at-bat was meaningless. The game had already been lost. And now, with it, their season.
Ohtani had been scheduled to take the mound on Monday, but had his turn pushed back due to a cracked fingernail or a blister, or both. Fully aware that he will once again miss out on playoff baseball unless the Angels trade him later this month, he gallantly took the ball anyway on Tuesday and got rocked, giving up homers on back-to-back pitches to Xander Bogaerts and Jake Cronenworth in the fifth, with the velocity on his four-seam fastball way down.
Then he did this:
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