OC Register: Shohei Ohtani placed on IL, will miss remainder of the season

[AngelsWin.com]

The Angels placed Shohei Ohtani on the 10-day injured list because of his sore oblique and announced that he will miss the remainder of his final season under contract to the team. The Angels have 14 games remaining.

The Angels announced the move on Saturday morning, about 13 hours after reporters noticed that much of the contents of Ohtani’s locker at Angel Stadium had been cleared. On Friday night, Angels media relations staffers consulted with general manager Perry Minasian before deferring further comment on Ohtani’s situation to Saturday.

Minasian is expected to address reporters on Saturday afternoon to fill in more of the blanks surrounding Ohtani’s status.

Ohtani tore the ulnar collateral ligament while he was pitching on Aug. 23, so ever since then it’s been apparent that Ohtani was going to have some type of surgery — perhaps another Tommy John surgery — but neither the team nor Ohtani gave any indication when that would happen.

Ohtani’s agent, Nez Balelo, spoke last week and said Ohtani would have some kind of procedure.

Ohtani has not spoken to the media since Aug. 9, following what turned out to be his penultimate game on the mound of the season.

After Ohtani suffered the pitching injury, he continued to serve as the DH for a couple weeks, but that came to an end when he hurt his oblique during batting practice on Sept. 4. Since then, Angels manager Phil Nevin has consistently said that Ohtani was just day to day, because Ohtani had indicated to him that he wanted to try to play. Ohtani was in the lineup on Monday afternoon in Seattle before he was scratched a couple hours before the first pitch.

As recently as Friday afternoon, Ohtani did a workout in the cage in an effort to try to get back in the lineup.

Sometime between that workout, around 3 p.m., and when reporters went into the clubhouse at around 9:30 p.m., following the 11-2 loss to the Detroit Tigers, Ohtani left the ballpark and most of the contents of his locker — which is more accurately a cubicle — were removed. A duffel bag from the 2023 All-Star Game was filled and sitting in front of the locker. None of the bats, shoes or other personal items that had been in the locker throughout the year were there. Only a dozen shirts on hangers remained.

It would be normal for a player’s locker to be cleaned out at the end of the season, or if he was going to be away from the team for the rest of the season. In this case, it was surprising for the locker cleanout to happen before the Angels had a chance to announce the situation.

Ohtani, 29, is expected to win his second MVP in a sensational three-season run, despite missing much of the final month of the season. The two-way star finishes his season with a .304 average, 44 homers and an OPS of 1.066. On the mound, he was 10-5 with a 3.14 ERA.

Ohtani is set to become a free agent in November, and he is expected to sign a record-breaking deal that could be worth more than $500 million.

More to come on this story.

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