Shohei Ohtani Trade Rumors: Yankees, Dodgers, Rangers, Rays 'Worth Watching' for Star

All signs currently indicate that the Los Angeles Angels will not be willing to trade superstar Shohei Ohtani prior to the Aug. 1 trade deadline.

However, teams will obviously still have great interest in acquiring the impending free agent, and ESPN's Buster Olney mentioned the Texas Rangers, Tampa Bay Rays, Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees as teams worth watching during a segment on Thursday's edition of the 6 p.m. ET SportsCenter.

The Angels sit four-and-a-half games out of the final American League wild card spot at 48-48. They face a steep uphill climb just to make the playoffs, especially with star outfielder Mike Trout out with a broken hamate bone in his left wrist that was given a six-to-eight week return timeline in early July.

With that in mind, the Angels are in a position where they may fail to make the playoffs with Ohtani and lose him in the offseason to another team in free agency. The fallback plan would be to trade him by Aug. 1 to rebuild the team and avoid losing him for nothing.

At this time, though, the Angels aren't giving up on this team or Ohtani as of now, per Olney, who kept the door open that owner Arte Moreno could end up changing his mind.

"What I'm hearing from teams is Ohtani is not available as of today. If you want to call the Angels—and this was true last year—you can make an offer for Shohei Ohtani and then sometime before the trade deadline, Arte Moreno, their owner, is going to decide whether or not to trade him. If in fact Arte decides he's willing to trade Ohtani, these are the teams that I think are worth watching."

The Rangers, who currently lead the AL West, were the No. 1 team on the list. However, Olney said that he heard Moreno "may not want to trade him to the Rangers."

He then listed the AL-leading Rays, who have a robust farm system last ranked eighth overall by Joel Reuter of B/R.

"I'm hearing from other executives, they believe that the Rays have the prospect package to get Ohtani for a two-month rental," Olney said.

The Dodgers were next, and that's a logical landing spot considering the team's prestige, location, competitiveness and deep pockets. However, Olney said that "this is probably the last team that he'd want to trade Ohtani to."

Then there were the Yankees, a floundering team sitting last in the AL East after a 2-8 stretch. Olney said that "we know the motivation is very high" for the team to do something.

For now, though, Ohtani remains an Angel.

Moreno has stated publicly to Jon Heyman of the New York Post in mid-June that he didn't want to deal Ohtani.

"I just don't know how you replace a guy like that," Moreno told the Post in mid-June. "We want to win, and it's nice to have him in the lineup. For me, it's about the fans."

The Angels also had Trout on the healthy roster then and were eight games over .500. Now their season is in the balance while Ohtani posted historic two-way numbers.

At the plate, he has an MLB-best 35 home runs and a 1.072 OPS. On the mound, he's 7-5 record with a 3.50 ERA, 1.12 WHIP and 139 strikeouts. He'll look to vault the Halos over .500 on Thursday against the visiting Yanks.