The Reds Should Expand Their Youth Movement Even Further
The Reds entered the 2023 season with a trio of young starters — Hunter Greene, Nick Lodolo, Graham Ashcraft — headlining their rotation, as well as a rookie third baseman (Spencer Steer) and a closer entering just his second big league season (Alexis Diaz). None of that quintet had more than a year of Major League service time. Ashcraft and Steer both had less than one full year. The Reds might’ve spent a small amount on veteran free agents this offseason (e.g. Wil Myers, Luke Weaver, Curt Casali, Luke Maile), but one look at the roster left little doubt this was a rebuilding team.
Six weeks into the season, the youth movement has brokered mixed results. Greene and Ashcraft (Sunday’s meltdown notwithstanding) have both looked impressive in the rotation. Diaz is doing his best impression of his older brother, striking out a stunning 51.2% of his opponents through 11 innings. Steer has delivered roughly league-average offense and shown some versatility, beginning to take regular reps at first base with Myers and Joey Votto both on the injured list. Lodolo has been extraordinarily homer-prone, but his strikeout and walk rates are every bit as encouraging as they were during a strong rookie effort in 2022.
Cincinnati fans are getting a glimpse at the hopeful future core for the Reds, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that more youthful reinforcements are — or should be — on the horizon. The Reds have every reason to let Lodolo try to sort through his homer woes at the big league level, but the fourth and fifth spots of the rotation are another story entirely. Those have been occupied by veterans Weaver and the just minutes-ago-DFA’d Luis Cessa for the bulk of the season, and the results rather unsurprisingly haven’t been good.
Weaver has made just three starts to Cessa’s six, and while a 7.88 ERA doesn’t inspire any confidence, Weaver has at least posted a 26% strikeout rate against an 8.2% walk rate. They’re both better than average marks — the strikeout rate in particular. Like Lodolo (and many other Reds hurlers who have the challenge of pitching at Great American Ball Park), Weaver’s home run rate is through the roof (2.81 HR/9). The Reds spent a couple million dollars to sign him as a free agent, and Weaver’s only had three starts. Ugly as they’ve been, he’ll get another few turns, even if the leash is (or should be) short.
Cessa’s spot seemed far more vulnerable. (Hence the bulk of this piece already having been written just prior to his DFA… thanks for prompting some last-minute rewrites, Reds!) In six starts, he allowed an earned run per inning, walked more batters than he struck out, and was moved to the bullpen for his most recent appearance. He didn’t start a single game from 2019-21, making the Reds’ decision to move him into the rotation last year and then to guarantee him a 2023 rotation spot a rather peculiar one.
Cessa posted a pedestrian 4.30 ERA in ten starts last season with an even less-encouraging 5.02 FIP. That might’ve made him a fine sixth or seventh starting option, but the Reds opted to only sign Weaver this offseason and leave the rotation largely unaddressed. Veteran Chase Anderson was re-signed on a minor league deal, but he’s already been traded to the Rays after triggering an opt-out in his contract. Right-hander Ben Lively was re-signed to a minor league deal, and the Reds selected him to the roster today alongside fellow offseason journeyman pickup Kevin Herget.
It’s not clear whether the 31-year-old Lively and 32-year-old Herget are short-term stopgaps or will get an actual look on the roster in the coming weeks, but even before this afternoon’s slate of moves, the crux of this argument has been that the Reds have more interesting options than the veterans they’ve plugged into the fourth and fifth spots of the rotation thus far. The promotions of Lively and Herget don’t change that.
Lefty Brandon Williamson and right-hander Levi Stoudt both came to Cincinnati by way of trade with the Mariners, coming over in the Jesse Winker/Eugenio Suarez and Luis Castillo trades, respectively. Neither has dominated in Triple-A to begin the season, though Stoudt did make his MLB debut in a spot start last month. Williamson, currently sporting an ERA north of 7.00 in 28 1/3 Triple-A frames, has not yet pitched in the big leagues. It’s worth noting that nearly all the damage against him came in one start, where he did not escape the first inning against the Cubs’ top affiliate and was thrashed for eight runs. Stoudt needs to improve upon the poor command he’s shown in Louisville before getting a real look in the big leagues.
The Reds have one particular minor league powerhouse who looks on the cusp of MLB readiness, however: left-hander Andrew Abbott. The 2021 second-round pick has skyrocketed through the minor leagues, reaching Double-A last year as a 23-year-old in his first full professional season and then overpowering both Double-A and Triple-A opponents early in the 2023 season.
Abbott opened the current campaign with 15 2/3 innings in Double-A, allowing just two runs on six hits and three walks with an astonishing 36 strikeouts. That’s not a typo; Abbott fanned a comical 64.3% of his opponents in those three Double-A starts before the Reds rather naturally jumped him to Triple-A. He hasn’t continued on at that deity-like pace at the top minor league level … he’s “merely” posted a 3.00 ERA with a 38.7% strikeout rate in another 15 innings of work. All in all, Abbott has 30 2/3 innings of 2.05 ERA ball with an eye-popping 50.8% strikeout rate to go along with a 7.6% walk rate, 41.5% ground-ball rate and 0.88 HR/9 mark.
The 23-year-old Abbott’s most recent start just happened to fall on Sunday, which would line him up to be fully rested come Saturday, when the Reds’ listed starter is TBD. That had been Cessa’s spot in the rotation, but Cincinnati opted to start Ashcraft on four days’ rest instead of giving Cessa his usual turn. (Ashcraft was blasted for eight runs in 1 2/3 innings.) It’s always possible that they’ll look into alternatives for the time being, preferring to give Abbott more seasoning and hold off on adding him to the 40-man roster just yet. But each of Williamson (May 5), Stoudt (May 6) and Herget (May 4) saw their most recent starts fall on a date that would line them up to pitch between now and Saturday.
If the Reds are indeed going to tap into their farm to make a change, Abbott is not only the best option in terms of 2023 performance — he’s also the starter who’s likeliest to be on full rest and ready to make that start. Even if Cincinnati bypasses him in favor of Lively or Herget this coming weekend, he’s already made the clear case that he’s a better option for the big league rotation than either Weaver or Cessa. And assuming Williamson can continue to shake off the impact of that catastrophic outing against the Cubs’ Iowa club — he rebounded with a quality start in his next appearance — it might not be long before either he or Stoudt stakes a claim to the fifth spot.
Going with a youth-forward rotation obviously has its pitfalls, but the Reds’ lack of offseason activity on the starting pitching front — both in terms of established big league starters and even in terms of veteran depth on minor league deals — clearly set the stage for that to eventually be the case in 2023. It’s not hard to imagine the Reds rolling with five starters who have under two years of big league service by sometime next month, if not sooner. The next step in the process should come this weekend. It’s only six starts, but Abbott looks like one of the organization’s four best rotation options at this point. Today’s moves might have added some fresh arms in Lively and Herget, but plugging either into the rotation would only continue treading water as they were with Cessa.
Reds Designate Luis Cessa, Select Ben Lively
The Reds announced a series of roster moves today, selecting right-hander Ben Lively and recalling fellow righty Kevin Herget. In corresponding moves, righty Luis Cessa was designated for assignment and left-hander Reiver Sanmartin was placed on the 15-day injured list with a left elbow stress reaction, retroactive to Monday. Additionally, infielder Matt Reynolds, who was designated for assignment on the weekend, cleared waivers and was outrighted to Triple-A Louisville. The club also released righty Hunter Strickland, per C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic.
Cessa, 31, spent many years working out of the bullpen for the Yankees before coming to the Reds at the deadline in 2021. He continued working as a reliever for the Reds initially but they converted him to the rotation late last year. They had a few vacancies after they traded away Luis Castillo, Tyler Mahle and Sonny Gray as part of their roster teardown. Cessa was able to hold his own in that new role last year, posting a 3.77 ERA over nine starts as the season was winding down.
He held a rotation job going into 2023 but couldn’t carry those results forward, as he’s been lit up for an ERA of 9.00 through 26 innings so far this year. There’s probably a bit of bad luck in there when considering his .410 batting average on balls in play and 60.2% strand rate but he’s also striking out a paltry 8.3% of batters faced, a significant drop from the 17.8% rate he managed in his nine starts at the end of last year.
The Reds will now have a week to trade Cessa or pass him through waivers. He’s making a salary of $2.65MM this year, which could deter other teams, considering his struggles on the season. Since he has more than five years of service time, in the event he clears waivers, he would have the right to reject an outright assignment and elect free agency while retaining that salary. If that comes to pass, any of the other 29 teams could sign Cessa for the prorated league minimum with the Reds on the hook for the remainder.
As for Lively, 31, he pitched in the big leagues in three straight years beginning in 2017, posting a 4.80 ERA in 120 innings. He signed with the Samsung Lions of the KBO League in August of 2019 and stayed with them through the 2021 campaign, registering a 4.14 ERA in his time there.
He returned to North America after that and has signed minor league deals with the Reds in each of the past two offseasons. Last year, he had a 4.09 ERA in 77 innings over 18 Triple-A starts but didn’t get called to the majors. He’s off to an even better start this year in terms of results, currently sporting a 2.33 ERA over 27 innings. There are some caveats to note, as he has just a 15.2% strikeout rate and is being helped by a .224 BABIP and 84.6% strand rate, but he will nonetheless get a chance to replicate those results in the big leagues, returning to the show for the first time since 2019.
Sanmartin is facing a significant absence as he won’t throw at all for the next four to six weeks, manager David Bell tells Bobby Nightengale of the Cincinnati Enquirer. That leaves Alex Young as the club’s only left-handed reliever for the time being.
As for Reynolds, he has the right to reject this assignment and elect free agency due to having a previous career outright, though it’s not yet clear if he’s chosen to do so. He only spent about a week on the club’s roster and got just five plate appearances in that time.
Strickland, 34, is a veteran who was with the Reds last year, making 66 appearances with a 4.91 ERA. He returned on a minor league deal in the winter, was released when he didn’t make the Opening Day roster but re-signed on another minors deal. Unfortunately, he has an 11.45 ERA through 12 Triple-A appearances and the Reds have released him yet again.
Guardians Release Roman Quinn
The Guardians announced Tuesday that outfielder Roman Quinn has been released. He’d been playing with their Triple-A affiliate after signing a minor league deal over the winter but coming up shy of a roster spot in spring training. Quinn is now a free agent and will look to sign on with another club in search of some speed and/or outfield depth.
Quinn, 29, was once a touted prospect in the Phillies organization but has never found his footing in the big leagues. He appeared in 15 games with the Guardians’ Triple-A club this year but managed only a .176/.391/.235 batting line in 48 plate appearances. That comes on the heels of a .215/.287/.304 showing in 87 big league plate appearances between the Rays and Phillies in 2022.
In parts of six Major League seasons, Quinn has tallied 599 plate appearances with a tepid .226/.303/.348 batting line to show for his efforts. Contact has been a considerable problem for Quinn, who’s fanned in 30.4% of his plate appearances against an 8% walk rate.
While Quinn doesn’t hit much, he’s a flat-out burner on the basepaths and in the outfield — evidenced by a 96th-percentile ranking from Statcast for his average sprint speed during the 2022 season. Despite a paltry .303 career on-base percentage, Quinn has swiped 43 bases in 54 tries (79.6%). He’s also capable of playing all three outfield positions and has drawn above-average grades for his glovework from both Defensive Runs Saved and Statcast’s Outs Above Average.
Orioles Designate Luis Torrens For Assignment, Recall Drew Rom
The Orioles announced a series of roster moves today, recalling left-hander Drew Rom, infielder/outfielder Ryan O’Hearn and infielder Terrin Vavra from Triple-A Norfolk. In corresponding moves, infielder Ramón Urías was placed on the 10-day injured list with a left hamstring strain, left-hander Keegan Akin was optioned to Norfolk and catcher Luis Torrens was designated for assignment.
Torrens, 27, was acquired from the Cubs less than a week ago and was a bit of a curious fit on Baltimore’s roster. They already had Adley Rutschman and James McCann forming their catching duo and Torrens was out of options, meaning he couldn’t be sent down to the minors. Now Torrens has been cut from the roster without even getting into a game as an Oriole, just a few days after Baltimore sent cash to Chicago in order to acquire him.
The Orioles are no strangers to acquiring veteran depth and almost immediately designating that player for assignment, in hopes of successfully passing him through waivers and retaining him in Triple-A. They’ve done this frequently over the past year, with the aforementioned O’Hearn a prime example. First baseman Lewin Diaz and catcher Anthony Bemboom have also fallen under this category, and the O’s tried to do the same with outfielder Jake Cave but lost him when the Phillies claimed him off waivers.
The 26-year-old Torrens is a career .227/.289/.352 hitter in 799 Major League plate appearances between the Padres, Mariners and Cubs. He’s connected on 19 home runs, fanned at a 26% clip and drawn a walk in 7.8% of those trips to the plate. He regularly made contact during his three-year run with Seattle, evidenced by a 91 mph average exit velocity and hefty 45.7% hard-hit rate, but that quality contact didn’t necessarily translate into production.
Defensively, Torrens has drawn below-average grades from Defensive Runs Saved and most pitch-framing metrics. He has a below-average 21.7% caught-stealing rate in his career but did throw out nine of 28 attempted thieves (32.1%) as recently as last season. The O’s will have a week to trade him or attempt to pass him through waivers, which seems like the more probable path they’ll tread, based on their history with this sort of move.
As for Rom, this is his first ascension to the Major League level. He’ll make his debut whenever he takes the mound for the first time. The 23-year-old southpaw, a fourth-round pick in 2018, has pitched exclusively out of the rotation so far in Norfolk, working 31 1/3 innings with a 2.87 ERA to go along with impressive strikeout (24.6%), walk (7.7%) and ground-ball (55.4%) rates on the year.
While Rom isn’t considered to be one of the Orioles’ top overall prospect, he is considered one of the best pitching prospects in a system that skews more toward position players than arms. MLB.com ranks Rom 19th among Baltimore prospects but sixth-best among the team’s minor league pitchers; it’s a similar story at Baseball America, where he’s 25th overall but ninth among their minor league hurlers. He doesn’t throw particularly hard, sitting in the low 90s with his heater, but has typically posted better-than-average strikeout and ground-ball rates. Rom has more than held his own against left-handed opponents in his minor league career but has been far more hittable when facing righties.
Yankees Reinstate Aaron Judge
May 9: The Yankees announced that Judge has been reinstated from the injured list today, as expected. In a corresponding move, infielder Oswald Peraza was placed on the 10-day injured list with a right ankle sprain, retroactive to May 6.
May 6: Reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge is “on track” to be activated by the Yankees Tuesday ahead of their match with Oakland, Bryan Hoch of MLB.com reports. That would be the earliest possible date Judge can return. Hoch reports that Judge has continued to perform running and hitting drills.
It goes without saying that Judge’s return would provide a huge boost for the Yankees, who find themselves in last place in the AL East and already ten games adrift of the first place Rays. Offense has been a big problem with and without Judge this season in the Bronx, with the Yankees ranking 27th in the sport in hits and 28th in on-base percentage. In Judge’s absence, the likes of Aaron Hicks, Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Franchy Cordero have seen regular playing time in the outfield, with all delivering well below average results.
For Judge’s part, he wasn’t quite at the blistering pace he hit at in 2022, but was still enjoying a quality start to the season. Through 26 games, the Yankees captain had a .261/.352/.511 line with six home runs.
The team recently activated center fielder Harrison Bader off the IL, so having both Bader and Judge back in the lineup will make the Yankees’ outfield picture look a bit more promising, although the lack of a clear option in left field remains a concern.
It’s unclear yet who on the current roster will make way for Judge’s return. Jake Bauers would seem a potential candidate, but the team may prefer to give him a longer opportunity to see if he can continue his impressive in Triple-A in the majors. Aaron Hicks continues to struggle this season but his contract makes taking him off the roster a major move. The team could also look to option either Oswaldo Cabrera or Oswald Peraza, two youngsters who are off to slow starts at the plate this season.
Mets Sign Gary Sanchez To Minor League Deal
12:30 pm: Sanchez will make $1.5MM if selected to the Mets’ roster with $1.2MM of incentives also available, reports Jon Heyman of the New York Post.
8:16 am: Gary Sanchez is returning to New York, as the veteran catcher is signing a minor league contract with the Mets, according to Joel Sherman of the New York Post.
Sanchez, 30, was unable to find a big league opportunity this past winter despite being the starting catcher for the Twins last season, and for the Yankees in the five seasons prior to that. Long considered a bat-first catcher who struggles defensively behind the plate, Sanchez has seen that reputation change on both sides of the ball in recent years. His defense received improved marks during his time with the Twins in 2022, though his offense has taken a downturn in recent years. Since the start of the 2020 season, Sanchez has slashed just .195/.287/.394 with a 29.5% strikeout rate. Though that production has translated to a 90 wRC+ that’s perfectly acceptable for a catcher, it’s still a far cry from his career mark of 109 or the 123 wRC+ he posted from the beginning of his career through the end of the 2019 campaign.
Sanchez previously signed with the Giants on a minor league deal earlier this season, but exercised a May 1 opt-out to return to the free agent market after not getting added to the active roster. Sanchez reportedly received interest from the Angels regarding his services after opting out, but will ultimately join the Mets, with whom he figures to act as quality catching depth behind top prospect Francisco Alvarez and backup Tomas Nido. The depth Sanchez can provide is of particular importance to a Mets club that figures to be without offseason signing Omar Narvaez for at least another month following his early season calf strain.
Sherman notes that, while the club’s initial plan is to send Sanchez to Triple-A Syracuse, the club hopes to help him rediscover the offensive prowess that made him a quality regular behind the plate over the past several years after Sanchez slashed just .164/.319/.182 in 69 plate appearances with the Giants at the Triple-A level.
A renaissance from Sanchez would be a major boon to a Mets club with World Series aspirations but a 17-18 record in the early going this season, particularly given the club’s early season struggles to find production behind the plate. Mets catchers have combined for a wRC+ of just 29 so far this season, the worst figure in the majors to this point. Long considered among the top prospects in all of baseball, Alvarez could certainly help to boost the club’s production behind the plate in theory, but his .220/.264/.320 slash line in 53 big league plate appearances this season suggests the 21-year-old may not be ready for a starting role in the majors just yet.
MLBTR Chat Transcript
Click here to read a transcript of today’s chat with MLBTR’s Steve Adams.
Giants Select Casey Schmitt, Designate Darin Ruf For Assignment
11:02am: The Giants announced that they’ve selected Schmitt’s contract. In a corresponding move, they reinstated first baseman/outfielder Darin Ruf from the injured list and designated him for assignment. Outfielder Cal Stevenson was also optioned to Sacramento.
11:00am: The Giants will select the contract of infield prospect Casey Schmitt prior to tonight’s game, reports Alex Pavlovic of NBC Sports Bay Area. The 2020 second-round pick will be making his Major League debut.
Schmitt, 24, has gotten out to a .313/.352/.410 start in Triple-A Sacrmento, striking out at a 19.3% clip against a more tepid 5.5% walk rate. For the season’s first few weeks, Schmitt was hitting for average but doing little else, walking at only a 3.6% clip with just a .367 slugging percentage. He’s picked up the pace of late, however, hitting .327/.393/.473 with a homer, five doubles, three stolen bases, an 8.2% walk rate and just a 13.1% strikeout rate over his past 14 games and 55 plate appearances.
While Schmitt has played primarily shortstop so far in 2023, the bulk of his minor league work has come at third base. In all, he has 512 career innings at shortstop and 1223 innings at the hot corner. The Giants have also played him at second base three times this month — the first three appearances of his career at that position — likely in an effort to increase his versatility and his utility on the big league roster.
The Giants have received outstanding production from infielders Thairo Estrada (.344/.394/.534) and J.D. Davis (.287/.360/.515), but with Brandon Crawford shelved by a calf strain (and struggling even when healthy), the infield has been thinned out. Brett Wisely and David Villar have both gotten looks at second base, with Estrada sliding over to shortstop in place of Crawford, but neither has hit well at all in 2023. Schmitt can give the Giants an option at either middle-infield slot, with Estrada handling the other, and hopefully provide a spark to the lineup in the process.
Scouting reports on Schmitt peg him as a plus defender on the left side of the infield, so it stands to reason that he can handle whichever of shortstop, second base or third base the Giants ask of him on a given day. What remains to be seen is whether this proves to be a short-term call-up until Crawford returns or whether Schmitt will get the chance to play his way into a more permanent role with the club. Given the team’s 15-19 start, it’s sensible to take a look at Schmitt and adjust the roster around him if he adapts well at the big league level. If he’s indeed in the Majors for good, he’d be on track to reach arbitration as a likely Super Two player following the 2025 season and reach free agency following the 2029 season — though future optional assignments can of course alter both trajectories.
As for Ruf, the 36-year-old’s return to the Giants will prove quite brief. Released by the Mets earlier this year, he quickly re-signed with the Giants and appeared in nine games before landing on the injured list due to a wrist injury. In 27 plate appearances prior to that IL stint, Ruf posted a solid .261/.370/.348 batting line.
The veteran Ruf was an outstanding find for the Giants in his return from a productive three-year run in the KBO, batting .248/.358/.455 in 726 plate appearances with San Francisco from 2020 through the 2022 trade deadline, when he was traded to the Mets in exchange for the aforementioned Davis and three others. It proved to be a disastrous trade for the Mets, as Davis immediately began hitting in San Francisco, while Ruf’s bat cratered in Queens; he hit just .152/.216/.197 in 74 plate appearances with the Mets last year and didn’t appear in a single game in 2023 before being cut loose.
The Giants will have a week to trade Ruf, place him on outright waiver or place him on release waivers. He has enough service time to reject an outright assignment and still retain his full $3MM salary. The Mets are on the hook for that sum as part of last summer’s trade, so any team that picks Ruf up will only be required to pay him the prorated league minimum for any time spent on the MLB roster. That’d be subtracted from what the Mets owe to him. In 727 career plate appearances against left-handed pitching, Ruf is a .271/.368/.519 hitter (142 wRC+).
Pirates To Designate Chase De Jong For Assignment
The Pirates are continuing to reshape the edges of their active roster, as they’re set to designate right-hander Chase De Jong for assignment and select the contract of outfielder Josh Palacios from Triple-A Indianapolis, reports Jason Mackey of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Twitter link).
De Jong, 29, had what looked to be a breakout 2022 showing with the Bucs after bouncing between the Blue Jays, Dodgers, Mariners, Twins and Astros organizations over the first 10 years of his big league career. Last year’s 71 2/3 frames were a career-high for the former second-round pick, and he turned in a sharp 2.64 ERA with a 20.1% strikeout rate against a 10.2% walk rate while working as a durable multi-inning reliever.
Things have gone awry quickly in 2023, however. De Jong has appeared in five games and been tattooed for 11 earned runs on 13 hits (three home runs), five walks and a hit batter while only fanning five of his 47 opponents (10.6%). His swinging-strike rate has plummeted from a respectable 10.5% in 2022 to 5.2% so far in 2023.
Promising as De Jong’s bottom-line results were in 2022, his pedestrian strikeout/walk rates and favorable BABIP (.222) and strand rate (86.3%) always made some level of regression seem likely. The extent to which they’ve snowballed was hardly a guarantee, but De Jong’s track record prior to last year’s excellent showing was rough; in 98 innings from 2017-21, he was tagged for a 6.52 ERA with similarly bearish marks from fielding-independent metrics. Overall, in 179 total innings at the MLB level, De Jong carries a 5.18 ERA, 17.6% strikeout rate, 10.2% walk rate, 30.7% ground-ball rate and 1.76 HR/9.
De Jong is out of minor league options, so the Pirates’ only course of action if they wanted to make a change was to designate him for assignment. They’ll have a week to trade De Jong or attempt to pass him through outright waivers. Even if he goes unclaimed, he’d have the option to reject the assignment by virtue of the fact that he’s been outrighted previously in his career.
Palacios, 27, is a former Blue Jays prospect who’s seen brief MLB time with Toronto (2021) and Washington (2022). He’s batted just .207/.267/.232 in a tiny sample of 91 Major League plate appearances but is a far more accomplished hitter in Triple-A, where he’s batted .305/.391/.462 in parts of three seasons. That includes a Herculean start to his 2023 season in Indianapolis, where he’s tallied 60 plate appearances and logged a ludicrous .434/.500/.774 slash line with four homers, four doubles, a triple and three stolen bases (in three attempts). Palacios has drawn six walks (10.6%) against just seven strikeouts (11.7%) and seen time in all three outfield spots.
How Much Revenue Does Shohei Ohtani Actually Generate?
Shohei Ohtani’s impact on the field as a two-way superstar is undisputed. Ohtani is a Cy Young-level talent on the mound, hurling 100 mph fastballs and making hitters look silly with his frisbee-like sweepers and devastating splitters. At the plate, he is one of the premier sluggers in the game, winning the Edgar Martinez Award for most valuable designated hitter in the last two seasons.
The 2021 AL MVP’s impact beyond the field is equally noteworthy.
Last October, Katsuhiro Miyamoto, renowned economist and Professor Emeritus at Kansai University, released a report on Ohtani’s economic effects in the 2022 season.
The study found that Ohtani’s economic effects totaled an estimated 45 billion Japanese Yen, approximately 337 million US dollars.
Miyamoto is a sports economics expert who has previously studied topics such as the economic impact of championship seasons of NPB teams and the economic damage sustained by the Japanese sports industry as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The bulk of Ohtani’s economic effects came from ticket sales, merchandise sales, Ohtani’s salary and sponsorships, and MLB broadcasting rights related to Ohtani.
Ohtani’s effect on ticket sales was calculated by hypothesizing the number of fans (both home and away) who attended Angels games because of Ohtani. The total estimate resulted in 631,174 fans, which accounts for roughly ¥6 billion ($45MM) in ticket sales. Ohtani merchandise sales in the US equaled ¥984MM ($7.26MM).
The ticket and merchandise sales coupled with his salary and sponsorships brought Ohtani’s direct impact on the US economy to ¥19.4 billion ($143.6MM).
Ohtani’s direct impact on the Japanese economy was calculated through merchandise sales, travel packages for Ohtani games, and appearance fees for TV commercials, which totaled an estimated ¥1.7 billion ($12.55MM).
In addition to these direct effects on the economy, Miyamoto accounted for primary and secondary economic ripple effects on related industries to calculate the final amount.
The estimated value of Ohtani’s economic effects in the 2022 season was nearly double that of Ohtani’s groundbreaking 2021 AL MVP season, which was an estimated 24 billion Japanese Yen ($178MM). Miyamoto explained that the increased effect was a result of higher attendance at games in 2022 because of the MVP campaign and inflation.
Miyamoto, who has been conducting similar studies for years, was stunned by the findings. “These numbers are unprecedented for a single athlete,” Miyamoto said. “For example, this [economic effect] is the equivalent of a championship campaign of a popular NPB team like the Yomiuri Giants, Hanshin Tigers, or Softbank Hawks and that is considering a team having about 70 players.”
Ohtani’s economic impact could also be found during Team Japan’s championship run at the World Baseball Classic. In February, before the tournament, Miyamoto stated that Team Japan can generate nearly 59.6 billion yen ($444MM) if they won the tournament. The final number was boosted to 65 billion yen ($484MM) after the tournament by what Miyamoto calls the “Ohtani Effect.” “It took every player’s contribution for Samurai Japan to win the world championship, but this was Ohtani’s tournament,” Miyamoto said.
It’s possible that the Ohtani’s economic effects in 2023 will dwarf the 2022 estimate. A free agent to-be in the fall, Ohtani is projected to sign the largest contract in MLB history. Earlier this year, he signed a long-term deal with Boston-based apparel company New Balance. In March, Forbes reported that Ohtani will collect $65 million in total earnings, the highest-ever in MLB, for the 2023 season before taxes and agents’ fees.
“We are thankful to live in the same era where we can witness Ohtani’s greatness,” Miyamoto said.