Ohtani’s departure this winter would leave significant gaps in the lineup and rotation.

Here’s a fair bet: you’ll hear and read a lot more about Los Angeles Angel’s two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani between now and the start of the 2024 Major League Baseball season.

The reasons are simple: Ohtani, who is in the midst of another MVP-caliber season, is an impending free agent; the Angels, despite not trading Ohtani at the deadline, still face unfavorable odds of retaining him this winter – in part because all of the league’s heavy hitters, from the Los Angeles Dodgers to the New York Mets, intend to pursue him this winter.

So much of the focus on Ohtani’s future, both in the short and long term, is on potential suitors and the Angels’ transactional quandary. Where will he sign, and for how much? Would it have been wiser to trade him than to let him walk and get draft-pick compensation? So on and so forth. Everyone appears to have read the script and understands Ohtani’s exit from the scene is inevitable, but few have left the camera trained on the Angels to see what happens next.

We’ve chosen to do just that below, taking stock of the Angels’ organization from the big-league squad down to the farm system. An answer to the topic of the day: what would the Angels look like without Ohtani?