LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers aren’t ruining baseball. No one is ruining baseball. But if you want to be mad at a ball club for eroding parity in the game, if you’re peeved about the super-duper team that’s not your team, then go yell at the … Angels.

Maybe you’ve already forgotten — sometimes it feels like people have — but once upon a time, Shohei Ohtani turned down the Dodgers. And that worked out how?

Like Roki Sasaki, the Dodgers’ newest acquisition, Ohtani too was a 23-year-old Japanese rookie phenom. And back then, in 2017, his choices came down to the Seattle Mariners, Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, Texas Rangers, San Francisco Giants, Dodgers and Angels — and he went with the Halos, who would let him pitch and hit and with whom he shared “a true bond,” Ohtani’s agent, Nez Balelo, told reporters then.

Six seasons he spent in Anaheim, six seasons without stepping on the field in a single playoff game.

Through no fault of Ohtani’s, of course. He was sensational. He was the American League Rookie of the Year and was twice a unanimous AL MVP. He regularly made history — in the regular season.

But when the games really mattered, the game’s biggest star and most dynamic talent was offstage, unable to ever do anything but watch.

Until last year. In his first season with the Dodgers after signing a $700 million deal with them in free agency, Ohtani got his first crack at the postseason and — surprise, surprise — he won his first World Series.

We don’t know exactly what counsel Ohtani gave Sasaki, who on Wednesday was the star of the Dodgers’ latest splashy, classy introduction. These suit-and-tie affairs that are becoming routine at Dodger Stadium, where in December 2023, they introduced Yoshinobu Yamamoto, another Japanese ace, and last month, two-time Cy Young Award winner Blake Snell, another of the noteworthy additions to their championship roster, along with veteran relievers Tanner Scott and Kirby Yates, outfielder Michael Conforto and infielder Hyeseong Kim.

If I were Ohtani trying to add Sasaki too, I’d have said this: Don’t do what I did, dude.

And, yeah, also: You should totally come here, ‘cause we’re really, really good and you’d make us really, really, really good.

That last part, if you’re one of the Dodgers’ heated haters, that’s your problem, isn’t it?

You think the whole if you-can’t-beat-’em-join-’em thing is weak. You think Sasaki is the Kevin Durant of baseball. You wanted him to take on Ohtani and not team up with him.

That would be an easier argument to make if the Angels had been relevant or competent during Ohtani’s tenure, if they’d been consistently decent or downright good. If we’d gotten the chance to see Sho-Time in the playoffs, like, ever.

As it was, his tenure in Anaheim — where, yes, he was given the opportunity to be his best self at the plate and on the mound, making him the Ohtani we know today — stands as something of a warning to other players coming from abroad.

Those prospects aren’t subjected to a draft and have what Sasaki on Wednesday called a “once-in-a-life-time opportunity” to choose their own destination. They absolutely should pick the best situation. You would.

You wouldn’t risk six valuable seasons, time you can’t get back. You wouldn’t want to be pressured to take the road less traveled just for the sake of it. And you wouldn’t appreciate being expected to put an organization on your back, not when there are so many variables out of your control.

This isn’t spurning your mates to go join the more popular crew, this is starting from scratch.

The Toronto Blue Jays reportedly were in Sasaki’s final three, but a guy whose goal is to go down as the G.O.A.T. of Japanese pitchers knows those sorts of legacies are built in the playoffs. And the Jays haven’t had a playoff win since 2016.

The San Diego Padres also were among Sasaki’s reported finalists. They’re much closer to winning it all than the Angels ever were, having made three playoff appearances in the past five years. But with an ownership dispute threatening to destabilize the front office, who’s to say they won’t soon look a lot like the Angels?

There are no guarantees in life or in sports, and certainly none in baseball. But the Dodgers are as close as you’ll get: They’ve gone to the playoffs for 12 consecutive seasons, the third-longest postseason streak in MLB history. That happens only when an organization is firing on all cylinders.

In the month Sasaki spent evaluating his potential employers, giving them all homework assignments as part of his decision-making process, the Dodgers were stepping up to the plate en masse.

“Because it didn’t involve money, this was actually more complicated than the last two acquisitions,” said Stan Kasten, the Dodgers’ president and part-owner, in reference to baseball’s rule that because Sasaki is younger than 25, he’s considered the same as an international amateur and could be signed for only an amount in a team’s international bonus pool — so, a minor league contract with a relatively paltry $6.5 million bonus.

“This involved much more of a cross-departmental program than the others did,” Kasten said. “We needed the input of the planning and development program, of the social media department, of the finance department, and of other departments I’m leaving out. We needed all of their input to make this work. … We needed the whole organization to pitch in.

“But we have star people in every department across the organization, so that’s what it takes.”

And now they have another star pitcher for their baseball department, an “electrifying and promising talent,” Andrew Friedman, president of baseball operations, called Sasaki. A right-hander with “swing-and-miss stuff,” manager Dave Roberts said.

A smart guy, Sasaki, who made the right, brave decision. Because no, choosing the Dodgers is not running from the pressure.

The Dodgers are the pressure.

There won’t be a more scrutinized team. A more debated and hated ball club. And there might not be a more beloved group, either. And Sasaki will be just where he belongs, in the spotlight, and not somewhere off in the wings, wishing he’d heeded the super-team’s call to assemble.

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