The Difference Between Probability and a Prayer: The Angels’ All-In Bet With Shohei Ohtani Is Probably Doomed

The Angels chose sentimental attachment over cold logic — and the tradeoff will likely hurt in the long run. But the decision still has its charm.

For all the speculation that the Los Angeles Angels might deal two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani before MLB’s Aug. 1 trade deadline, L.A. reversed course in a big way on Wednesday. Not only did they declare that they were pulling Ohtani off the market, they also doubled-down as buyers by trading a pair of top prospects to the Chicago White Sox for starting pitcher Lucas Giolito and reliever Reynaldo López. This sequence of events means the Angels are essentially betting everything on making the postseason in 2023 — or else.

On the one hand, it’s a pretty risky bet. The Angels sit third in the American League West (6.5 games back) and sixth in the AL wild card (3.5 games back), with three teams squeezed between them and the final wild card spot. A fourth team — the Seattle Mariners — is only a game behind Los Angeles in both races while sporting a superior run differential. Because of all this, the Angels have only a 13% chance of making the playoffs at the moment, last among the crop of 11 AL teams with at least a 10% playoff probability.

The new additions move that needle, to be sure. Giolito was one of the top possible trade targets among starting pitchers this season, making his acquisition one of the coups before the deadline. Together, Giolito and López combined for 3.8 Wins Above Replacement per 162 games with the White Sox, which boosts Los Angeles’ talent over the rest of the season beyond what would be implied by their middling 52-49 record. The anticipated return of Mike Trout in mid-August from his wrist injury helps as well, building the case that the Angels are better than the probability models know.

However, even if we generously estimate that L.A. will have improved its talent by 5 wins for the stretch run (giving credit for Giolito, López, Trout’s missing month and whatever additional moves the team makes), that would only have them playing like an 88-win team over the rest of the season — a pace that would leave them with 85 wins by season’s end. The New York Yankees (85.0 projected wins) are in the same range, and they boast just a 27% playoff probability. Even in the best-case scenario, the Angels are much more likely to miss the postseason than to make it.

That cold, calculated logic is why I argued the franchise would be better off in the long run by trading Ohtani and resetting for the future. Los Angeles is probably not making the playoffs, and Ohtani is probably going to walk away for nothing in return except a compensatory draft pick. The Angels are betting on a dream that somehow neither of those things are true — and in the high-stakes world of plotting out a franchise’s future, it’s not wise to make emotional gambles that have a low probability of success.

Emotion, however, speaks to the core of how owner Arte Moreno has operated the Angels — right down to the reversal of his decision to sell the team last winter. “I couldn’t do it,” Moreno later admitted. “In my heart, I just couldn’t go through with it.”

Moreno probably had the exact same feelings when it came to wrestling with a potential Ohtani trade. The math might say a deal would yield plus-EV. But trading the best player in baseball, a once-in-a-lifetime talent, for the type of return reportedly on the table (“teams were offering minor league players—and not their top prospects,” wrote Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated) would have felt like a betrayal of the Angels’ current roster — Trout included — and their fans. If a team can’t win with a gift from the baseball gods like Ohtani around, why should anyone ever care about that team?

Red Sox rooters still haven’t forgiven Boston’s brass for trading Mookie Betts, despite the passage of four years and a near-World Series appearance in 2021. Trading Ohtani is the same idea, but on an even greater scale.

At the same time, there’s a reason why those in charge must think differently from those who cheer. When former Angels manager Joe Maddon was leading the Chicago Cubs in the 2016 World Series, he always wrote a simple message to himself on his lineup cards: DNBAFF, or “Do Not Be A F------ Fan.” Sometimes tough decisions have to be made without emotional attachments, for the good of the team; the mindset of a fan can cloud those decisions.

The Angels did mortgage some of their future by trading for Giolito and López. The two minor leaguers the Halos sent away, catcher Edgar Quero and pitcher Ky Bush, were the team’s second- and third-ranked prospects according to MLB Pipeline. However, neither ranked among Baseball America’s Top 100 going into the season. According to my research, we would have expected prospects of that caliber to generate about 4.5 total WAR for the Angels over the next 11 seasons. If you agree with the premise of the Angels as buyers, there were worse ways for Los Angeles to load up for its playoff charge. But that’s only if you thought they should buy in the first place.

There’s something romantic — Quixotic even — about going all-in and taking one last shot with Ohtani while he’s at the peak of his powers. After all, Ohtani still leads MLB in triples and home runs this season, as well as slugging and OPS. And he seemed to directly respond to the Angels’ newfound status as definitive buyers in his start on Thursday afternoon: He recorded the first complete game of his career with a one-hit shutout against the Detroit Tigers in Game 1 of a doubleheader. Then he homered twice in Game 2, just for good measure.

If things work out and the Angels sneak into the playoffs, they might actually make some noise; their chance of winning the World Series conditional on making the playoffs is 5.1% (basically the same as the Baltimore Orioles, who sit in first place in the AL East). That turn of events could be enough to convince Ohtani to stick around for the long haul. Every team dreams of having a player like Ohtani on its roster, and the Angels are going to savor every second of it — no matter what the cold, hard logic says.

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