Dodgers landing Shohei Ohtani was a result of insane Angels malpractice

The Dodgers are deservedly on a high, high horse coming out of the offseason. Everyone knows that they've had one of the most successful free agent runs of all time, if not the most successful, and players are already embracing their roles as villains to the 29 other fanbases in baseball.

On their quest for world domination, LA has come out on top over a good chunk of the league. The Giants, Mets, Yankees, Blue Jays, Red Sox, and Angels are all eating the Dodgers' dust and, thanks to Juan Soto, the Yankees may be the only ones who have been able to recover some amount of their pride after being spurned by players who chose LA.

We've already discussed at some length the utter embarrassment the Red Sox have endured by losing out on both Teoscar Hernández and James Paxton because of their penny-pinching, and the Giants losing Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto because no one likes San Francisco, but we've mostly left the always downtrodden Angels alone...until now.

Per Bob Nightengale, the Angels believed that they could've persuaded Ohtani to re-sign with them if they had agreed to deferring most of his $700 million the way the Dodgers did, but owner Arte Moreno refused to engage. So the Angels let go of a generational player and the face of their franchise because they didn't want to do something incredibly team-friendly that would've allowed them to build around him. Make it make sense.

LA Angels lost Shohei Ohtani to Dodgers because Arte Moreno wasn't willing to defer money

The Angels have been a lost cause for a long time now, and a confusing one at that. Maybe it shouldn't be surprising that they passed on opportunity to build around Ohtani, considering they failed to do so during his six years in Anaheim, and have been failing to do so with Mike Trout for 13 years. They're clearly willing to spend money sometimes, but the fact that they were willing to let Ohtani go while still owing known curmudgeon and baseball-hater Anthony Rendon $114 million over the next three years must be an incredibly hard pill for Angels fans to swallow.

Meanwhile, Ohtani is having the time of his life at Dodgers spring training and is expected to make his first start in Dodger blue on Tuesday's matchup against the White Sox. It's likely that he'll see the Angels sometime during their four spring games and rub salt ever further into Angels' fans wounds.