From Spring Training through what they hope is another World Series championship, the Los Angeles Dodgers will be followed by a massive media parade. With Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto in tow, the Dodgers are not only MLB title favorites but also an international story.
This week, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts and several veteran players on the team acknowledged that the level of attention will be unique. Combine that with Ohtani’s reluctance to open up to media and his tendency to avoid interview opportunities altogether, and the Dodgers will all have to adjust to their new reality early on in the year.
With the Angels, Ohtani developed a reputation for skipping out on press conferences and dodging reporters. Many big-name mega stars, including Lionel Messi at Inter Miami, have followed a similar tact and stirred up controversy as a result.
Roberts acknowledged this new scrutiny and his star player’s media avoidance could pose challenges, while veteran leaders Jason Heyward and Walker Buehler said it was an opportunity.
On Friday, Roberts directly said some Dodgers players might be frustrated if Ohtani rarely spoke with the media.
“… The bottom line is he makes us a considerably better ballclub. But I think, yeah, a conversation is going to be had,” Roberts said after comparing Dodgers’ end-of-benchers to himself when he was Barry Bonds’ teammate nearly 20 years ago.
However, Roberts jokingly assigned Heyward as the team’s American liaison for Japanese media.
Heyward turned the blame back toward Dodgers reporters.
“It’s harder (with Ohtani) if you guys make it harder,” he said Saturday.
Buehler, returning from Tommy John surgery to bolster the Dodgers’ rotation, looked at the addition of Ohtani through the lens of the broader baseball landscape. To Buehler, it’s about the Dodgers doing their part to bring in new fans by way of Ohtani playing for a premier franchise in MLB.
“I think it’s great for us as a team, great for a lot of the guys on our team that are going to get more attention for what they do,” Buehler told reporters Saturday. “I think it’s good for the game to be covered in this way.”
Most of the Dodgers’ roster is full of established veterans looking to win. Ohtani will help them do that.
But considering there are already enormous expectations for this big-spending, high-scrutiny to win a World Series in a non-pandemic shortened season, a planet’s worth of reporters following the team day-to-day certainly could make for a distraction. That’s Roberts’ (and perhaps Ohtani’s) job to handle, and whether it’s fair or not, no baseball fan will let the Dodgers off the hook in October if they fall short again. You get the greatest players; you get more media scrutiny.
Sometimes, those players don’t want the attention their greatness earns. Those are the breaks.
The Dodgers have been dealt a winning hand by management. It sounds like adjusting to the attention they will receive will be as big a part of their spring work as finding a batting order and developing clubhouse chemistry. Most clubs would trade everything for that.
