Shohei Ohtani has proven teams’ relentless pursuit of him this past offseason was worth it, as he quickly has become one of the most exciting young players in the game.
Among those teams trying to acquire him were the Boston Red Sox, and they got a chance to see him in person Tuesday night, lighting up the two-way player during a start in a dominant 10-1 victory over the Los Angeles Angels.
While his showing Tuesday may not have been the best display of his skills, he certainly has proven to be a worthy acquisition, and we now have a little peek into the role he would have played had he decided to come to Boston.
Sox manager Alex Cora detailed Boston’s thinking while pursuing Ohtani during his weekly appearance on WEEI’s “Dale & Keefe.”
“Yeah he was going to do both things,” Cora said of allowing Ohtani to play both ways. “There’s a lot of things that went on through the process, a lot of different scenarios, who were we going to find. Or if we sign ‘X’ player, we trade for ‘X’ player, how he was going to fit.
“We had a lot of stuff planned out,” Cora continued. “I still have that email with a lot of scenarios throughout the season, the way we were going to use him or try to use him. It was interesting to say the least, but he ended up deciding to come here to L.A. and we still have a good team.”
Interesting, indeed.
Boston did have its cards stacked against them from the beginning, however, as the Japanese phenom was dead-set on playing for a team on the West Coast. But like Cora said, it’s not as if things haven’t worked out for the Red Sox so far.
