6 Burning Questions After Angels' Shohei Ohtani UCL Injury

Shohei Ohtani's magical, exciting and historically good season has unfortunately proven to be too good to be true.

The "arm fatigue" that kept the two-way superstar from pitching for two weeks and caused him to leave his start on Wednesday after 1.1 innings was revealed to be something more nefarious: a tear in the ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. He's done pitching in 2023.

Ohtani was back in the Los Angeles Angels' lineup for the second game of Wednesday's double-header against the Cincinnati Reds, which could signal the 2021 American League MVP and free-agent-to-be will be able to hit for the remainder of the year. That's something he's done before, for the record.

But for now, neither Ohtani nor the Angels truly knows what comes next.

"I don't know what to expect," Angels general manager Perry Minasian told reporters. "We're gonna go day to day and just see how it goes. See how he feels. I think as we get more information, as far as recovery time and all those types of things. We'll have more information down the road."

In the meantime, here are six questions that must be asked.

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1. Will Ohtani Need Tommy John Surgery?

Whenever a pitcher has a torn UCL, Tommy John surgery usually follows. Starting with the actual Tommy John in 1974, there are thousands of cases to consult as evidence.

Yet Ohtani, 29, is in the process of seeking a second opinion, according to Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register. There is a non-zero chance he'll avoid Tommy John surgery, be it through an internal brace procedure (i.e., Rich Hill) or non-surgical means (i.e., Masahiro Tanaka).

If Ohtani does need Tommy John surgery, it wouldn't be the first time. He first had the procedure on Oct. 1, 2018, which kept him from pitching in 2019 and was still a lingering issue when he made only two starts in 2020.

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2. How Screwed Are the Angels?

As in right now? Very.

They're 9-18 since they decided on July 26 to take Ohtani off the trade market and go all-in on a playoff push. They're now 10.5 games out in the AL wild-card race and, according to FanGraphs, already have a 0 percent chance of making the playoffs.

Even if Ohtani keeps up an offensive barrage that's yielded a 1.069 OPS and 44 home runs, him not being able to pitch is still a huge blow. The Angels had gone 14-9 in his starts.

It shouldn't be swept under the rug that fellow MVP Mike Trout's season is also in jeopardy after he returned to the IL after only one game.

If the question is how screwed the Angels are for the future, the answer is likewise "very."

It's hard to say what they cost themselves by not trading Ohtani, but it surely would have been a boon to a farm system that B/R's Joel Reuter ranked as the third-worst in MLB even before a handful of prospects went out the door at the trade deadline. By way of the qualifying offer, all they can recoup for him now is a draft pick.

That's if they don't re-sign him, though any pessimism that already existed about that should arguably be even stronger. Even setting aside the money question—more on that later—how willing will he be to re-up with a team that's been unable to keep his arm healthy?

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3. What About Ohtani's MVP Chances?

These, at least, are probably fine.

He's such a favorite to win his second AL MVP that DraftKings doesn't even have betting odds for others. That tracks with Ohtani's general dominance of the leaderboards, including a nearly 4-WAR edge on the next-best player at Baseball Reference.

It's theoretically possible for someone else to take advantage of the window provided by Ohtani's UCL injury, especially if it leads to immediate season-ending surgery. Someone like, say, Houston Astros outfielder Kyler Tucker could have a shot.

It's a long shot, though, and it's not like there's no precedent for a player even on a bad team to win the MVP after having his season cut short.

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4. How Bad Is This for MLB and MLB Fans?

From MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to every fan who's ever so watched as much as a single second of Ohtani, the entire baseball world should be in mourning right now.

It's no fun when any good player gets bad news, much less when it's very bad news for a player unlike one whom anyone has ever seen.

With 44 home runs already in the bag and 62 still hypothetically somewhere over the horizon, Ohtani had been doing a solid impression of 2022 Aaron Judge. Factor in that he was also again one of the league's best pitchers, he was presenting easily his most compelling case for the best season ever.

So much for that, and it's probably just a matter of time before the blame game starts. Specifically, before someone blames Ohtani's injury on the pitch timer.

It's a specious scapegoat, but his relatively slow pace prior to 2023 and the general rise in elbow and arm injuries means those who would make the argument aren't totally without ammunition.

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5. What About the Future of 2-Way Stars?

This seems a fair question to ask, if for no other reason than the baseball world is clearly trying to make two-way stars A Thing.

Consider how a record-shattering eight players were chosen as two-way prospects in the 2023 MLB draft. That includes Bryce Eldridge, whom some call the "American Ohtani," with the 16th overall pick by the San Francisco Giants. The Giants also took Reggie Crawford as a two-way player with the No. 30 pick in the 2022 draft.

The general message translates as such: "If Shohei Ohtani can do it, then why not find out if anyone else can?"

Well, the obvious caveat now is that Ohtani could only do it on a limited basis. Even before coming to the States, 2016 was his only season as a full-time hitting and pitching star in Japan. He was able to replicate that in wondrous fashion in 2021 and 2022, but he couldn't make it to the end of 2018 or this year unscathed.

It calls to attention how even Babe Ruth was never truly a full-time two-way star, as he was a great pitcher and then a great hitter. As such, it's possible the status quo wherein two-way stars weren't A Thing in the decades between Ruth and Ohtani had it right.

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6. What Will Happen in Ohtani's Free Agency?

Some pretty huge numbers have been attached to Ohtani's value, from a hypothetical figure of $912 million to a more realistic baseline of $500 million.

But now...well, who knows?

In the event Ohtani does undergo a second Tommy John surgery, teams will have every right to treat his pitching arm as radioactive. He would join a grim club of pitchers who've had it twice within a span of five years. The only free-agent success story of the bunch is Jameson Taillon, and that's only if you ignore the 5.60 ERA he has in the first season of his four-year, $68 million deal with the Chicago Cubs.

Even if Ohtani avoids a second Tommy John surgery, it would still be hard to see his right elbow as anything other than a ticking time bomb. As in, sort of like when he came to MLB in 2017 already with a compromised UCL that inevitably blew up.

As to what avenues Ohtani and his representatives at CAA Sports might pursue this winter, one option would be to pursue a short-term deal that would afford him an opportunity to show he's still capable of pitching before re-entering the market after 2024 or 2025.

There's also what Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic is proposing: a "creatively structured" contract "with incentives, but also opt-outs that will enable him to maximize his value if he re-establishes himself as a pitcher." Picture a long-term deal with a hefty sum of guaranteed money for Ohtani the hitter, but which would require Ohtani the pitcher to earn more cash.

It also seems worthwhile to consider the possibility of Ohtani, whether by his own volition or upon the insistence of a universally skeptical market, giving up pitching and marketing himself as a position player.

His athleticism and arm strength hint at a possible home in right field, which would only attract more Ruth comparisons and indeed give Ohtani a profile similar to that of Judge. If Judge could get a nine-year, $360 million contract after his age-30 season, then Ohtani could conceivably angle for an 11-year, $440 million deal after what's only his age-28 season.

It can't be stressed enough that this is what the phrase "just spitballing here" is for. The true name of the game right now is uncertainty, which reflects the reality of the situation.

Whereas Ohtani spent the first five months of the 2023 season as the same spectacular two-way star everyone knows and loves, he's a question mark right now.

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Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.