Bleakest of Bay Area baseball seasons ends in the most fitting way
Baseball player Shohei Ohtani, of Japan, poses for photos after a news conference at Angel Stadium, Saturday, Dec. 9, 2017, in Anaheim, Calif. Ohtani, who intends to be both a starting pitcher and an everyday power hitter, turned down interest from every other big-league club to join two-time MVP Mike Trout and slugger Albert Pujols with the Angels, who are coming off their second consecutive losing season and haven’t won a playoff game since 2009.
It was Black Friday for the Giants, but what else would you have expected? The news that both Shohei Ohtani and Giancarlo Stanton had passed on the chance to wear the Orange and Black was perfectly in line with how 2017 has played out.
Add the implosion of the A’s fancy new ballpark plans, and the whole week was just one more dark chapter in one of the bleakest years in local baseball history.
For the Giants it was a worst-case scenario. Obviously, they had to go after the two marquee names on the market, and the pursuit was always going to be public. But by doing so, and being in the final running for both players, their frustrated fans’ hopes were raised, only to be shattered again.
(Small silver lining: The Chronicle broke the news Friday that Stanton is heading to the Yankees, not the Dodgers, so the Giants won’t have to face the player who spurned them on a regular basis.)
Both players were always long shots: two-way star Ohtani really only made sense in the American League, where he can both pitch and be a designated hitter. Stanton held all the leverage in his deal, and so he wasn’t likely to go to a team with so many needs, coming off a 98-loss season. He went the easy route, ending up on the richest team in the American League, in a killer lineup, where he’ll be protected by Aaron Judge. (Wondering:…