With his contract expiring at the end of the season and the Los Angeles Angels hovering between buyer and seller, Shohei Ohtani’s name is going to be heard a lot between now and MLB’s trade deadline on August 1.
This occurred on Thursday’s episode of The Herd with Colin Cowherd, as Cowherd and Jason McIntyre speculated on what Ohtani might draw on the trade market. Cowherd identified himself as a “baseball casual,” which quickly became apparent.
Cowherd stated that he felt the Angels could get “five first-round picks, your best prospect, your third-best prospect and two solid starters.”
McIntyre, noting the Angels’ poor history in the draft, countered. “I would rather just take best prospects. Like, ‘Give me your best three guys in the farm system, Yankees. Give them to me now. Ohtani’s yours.'”
Cowherd countered with “Three best prospects, three No. 1 picks. Would you move him?” That was suitable for McIntyre. And as he began to explain that he would take that deal, Cowherd got a notice.
“It says here you can’t trade draft picks,” Cowherd said. He then reiterated something that was abundantly clear, “I’m a baseball casual.”
Colin Cowherd and Jason McIntyre have an entire conversation about trading draft picks for Shohei Ohtani… which you can't do in Major League Baseball. pic.twitter.com/nnCzKcUCkj
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) July 21, 2023
Imagine being a political novice but finding yourself in a situation where you have to predict how each state will vote in the 2024 Presidential Election. Fortunately, though, you get several hours to do research.
You may not be able to identify the political leanings of every county in every swing state. But you should be able to at least identify that states like California and New York will vote for the Democrat while Idaho and Utah will vote for the Republican. It wouldn’t take more than a few minutes on Wikipedia to figure that out.
Draft picks are frequently traded in the NFL and NBA. So, it’s completely understandable that a self-proclaimed “baseball casual” would think they could be traded in MLB. And if this was someone asking random people on the street what they thought Ohtani might bring in a trade, it’s reasonable to assume that some of those people would say that he’d bring draft picks.
But that’s not what happened here. Anyone who hosts any sports talk show until the trade deadline knows that Ohtani is going to be a hot topic of conversation. And while he is uniquely talented and can reasonably already be called one of the greatest players in the history of the sport, he’s not the first superstar to be traded.
How long would it take Cowherd to figure out what the return was for other stars, like Mookie Betts and Juan Soto? Then, much like the political novice would quickly realize that no Republican has won California since 1988, the “baseball casual” would realize that draft picks were not part of the return for any other star player.
If nothing else, hopefully Cowherd (and any other hosts who may also be “baseball casuals”) will remember this in the future.
[Photo Credit: FS1]
