We've often discussed how truly dependent Shohei Ohtani's fantasy baseball value is on your league's settings and I'm in firm agreement that he's a much less appealing selection in a league with weekly transactions which force seven-day decisions between his hitting or pitching numbers. It's extremely difficult to make a case for ever using him as a pitcher, considering the tendency of the Los Angeles Angels to use a six-man rotation to keep his workload in check, meaning nothing but one-start weeks. As a hitter alone, he's a top-20 overall player in terms of sheer talent, so it's tough to defer to his pitching numbers while ignoring a 5-6 game week out of the DH spot.
Well, it turns out that I'll be going against that grain in one such league in 2022: The annual League of Alternative Baseball Reality (LABR), AL-only industry analysts salary-cap draft, which took place March 4. Ohtani was the 12th player off the board, acquired by yours truly for an entirely reasonable (even if only to be used as a hitter) $31.