TORONTO — While most of baseball is saying hats off to Shohei Ohtani, Toronto manager John Schneider wants a cap back from the two-way star.
Before signing a $700 million, 10-year contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, Ohtani met with Blue Jays officials on Dec. 4, 2023, at the team’s spring training complex in Dunedin, Florida.
Ohtani will be the opening batter of the World Series, hitting leadoff for the defending champion Dodgers against the Blue Jays at Rogers Centre on Friday night after his unprecedented performance at the plate and on the mound in the NL Championship Series.
“I hope he brought his hat, the Blue Jay hat that he took from us in our meeting. I hope he brought it back, finally,” Schneider said Thursday.
“And the jacket for Decoy,” he added, a reference to Ohtani’s dog, a Nederlandse kooikerhondje. “It’s like, give us our stuff back already.”
Ohtani helped lead the Dodgers to last year’s title, hitting .310 with 54 homers, 130 RBIs and 59 stolen bases.
Back to pitching in a limited role this season as he returned from elbow surgery, he batted .282 with 55 homers, 102 RBIs and 20 steals while going 1-1 with a 2.87 ERA in 14 starts, striking out 62 in 47 innings.
Last Friday, he homered three times while pitching six shutout innings and striking 10 against Milwaukee as the Dodgers completed a four-game sweep of the NL Championship Series.
Absent Ohtani, the Blue Jays had the finances to give first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. a $500 million, 14-year contract that starts next year, and he helped Toronto reach the World Series for the first time since 1993.
“He’s a great player,” Schneider said. “But that aside, I think that we have a great team and just an unbelievable cast of characters and players. I think things worked out the way they’re meant to work out.”
Schneider isn’t sure how close the Blue Jays came to signing Ohtani.
“When we met with him, you felt good about it, and you felt good about the feedback he was giving about our organization and opportunity here,” he said. “But you never really know what a player’s feeling in free agency, and there’s a lot of things that have to line up for them personally, too, so you can’t really think about what if. You think about the 26 [players] that we have.”