MLB insider reports executives are elevating their Dodgers, Shohei Ohtani complaint

For years, the rest of baseball has accused the Los Angeles Dodgers of operating with advantages nobody else can match. Too much money. Too much depth. Too much star power. Too much creativity.

Now, according to USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, executives around the league are preparing to elevate a brand-new grievance this winter: Shohei Ohtani’s roster spot.

The complaint sounds almost absurd on the surface, considering Ohtani is literally doing something no player in modern baseball history has successfully sustained. But that’s exactly why rival executives are circling it. They believe the Dodgers have found a loophole that effectively gives them a 27th man on a 26-man roster.

Under current MLB rules, teams are capped at 13 pitchers. Ohtani, because he qualifies as a two-way player, does not count toward that limit. So while every other team is forced to balance its bullpen carefully, the Dodgers can carry 13 traditional pitchers plus Ohtani (in other words, 14 arms). And now executives want MLB to rethink the entire structure.

What makes this especially funny is that baseball spent years marketing Ohtani as the sport’s greatest unicorn — a once-in-a-century player who could save baseball’s popularity problem almost by himself. MLB built entire marketing campaigns around his uniqueness. National broadcasts revolved around him. The 2023 World Baseball Classic became an Ohtani coronation.

Now executives are basically saying, “Actually, can we maybe regulate the unicorn a little?”

Rival MLB executives are crying foul over Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani advantage

The timing is revealing, too. Nobody cared much about this when Ohtani was with the Angels because, frankly, the Angels weren’t winning enough for anyone to view the rule as a competitive imbalance. But now that he’s with the Dodgers — the team everyone already believes is gaming every possible edge — the complaints suddenly matter.

This also feels like the latest chapter in baseball’s ongoing frustration with the Dodgers simply being smarter and more aggressive than everyone else. Whether it’s deferred money, pitcher development, roster churn, platoon optimization or injury management, rival executives constantly complain after the Dodgers exploit inefficiencies the rest of the league could have pursued themselves.

The Ohtani loophole just happens to be the easiest one to explain publicly.

In fairness, the executives do have a point. The spirit of the 13-pitcher limit was to prevent endless bullpen games and hyper-specialized pitching staffs. The league wanted more action, fewer pitching changes and shorter games.

But the pitch clock has already dramatically accelerated pace of play, which weakens the original justification for strict pitcher caps in the first place. If teams want 14 pitchers and only three bench bats, why not let them?

That’s where this conversation probably ends up. Not with MLB punishing Ohtani or targeting the Dodgers specifically, but by loosening roster construction rules altogether.

Still, there’s something undeniably amusing about the entire situation. Ohtani became baseball’s most famous player because he does things nobody else can do. Now, rival executives are lobbying to make sure nobody benefits too much from it.

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