J.J. Watt rightfully called out reporters for criticizing Shohei Ohtani about his secretive free agency

Shohei Ohtani’s free agency has been *the* story of the MLB offseason, but at the same time, there has been little information about where the two-way superstar could be leaning.

That’s by design, and some major media personalities haven’t appreciated Ohtani’s approach. Leave it to former NFL star J.J. Watt to call out some weird takes popping up as of late.

ESPN’s Jeff Passan reported last month that Ohtani would hold any leaks against teams, which has led to some of baseball’s biggest newsbreakers being left in the dark on the entire saga. Aside from Dodgers manager Dave Roberts surprisingly revealing that the team met with Ohtani, there has been almost nothing out there from teams. That has brought on takes like these:

Just in the past 24 hours, we’ve seen Buster Olney, Stephen A. Smith and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo criticize Ohtani on ESPN. The Athletic’s Braves beat writer David O’Brien also called Ohtani’s approach pretentious.

But as Watt pointed out, there isn’t really anything Ohtani could do here to keep reporters satisfied. If he let the entire free agency play out in the public eye, he’d get criticized in a similar way LeBron did when he signed with the Heat. It would be a circus, and sure, someone would probably scoop the decision. Yet, by taking this private approach, Ohtani gets to focus on the decision on his own terms and see which teams he can actually trust.

There’s nothing wrong with that, and fans agreed with Watt for calling out the entitled complaints by some media members.