I have such a hard time with the frequency the Giants are noted as serious contenders for huge free agents. They were supposed to be in on the Aaron Judge sweepstakes too and people talked about them like a serious contender.

But why? They have a terrible major league team and nobody in the minors either. If Ohtani didn't like losing on the Angels, the Giants are hardly a move in the right direction.

I think some are underestimating the geographical factor. Being on the West Coast is huge if you have family in east Asia that you frequently visit. Same goes for Europe and the east coast.

Can someone enlighten me on why the Cubs are #2?

There are plenty of teams on the West Coast though. The Giants haven't made a big splash in quite some time. The biggest free agent they signed last offseason in terms of contract money was giving Mitch Hanniger $43 million.

I don't see why they'd be in the sweepstakes at all. It's like saying because the A's are (temporarily) on the West Coast they're players too.

Good point. He better not go to the A's, lol

Their championship teams were anchored by draft picks. Ever since they've whiffed on all the major picks they've had and aside from Kris Bryant, I can't think of another big name player they've signed or brought in since they last won a World Series.

The Dodgers seem so obvious. Unless he has the desire to play in New York. The Cubs? NFW I don't care how much money they have to throw at him.

Sheffield and Waveland Avenues would see a lot of long balls though. Shucks if he hit one into the Addison train station, it might end up in Evanston or even Wilmette.

I saw Kingman hit one out of Wrigley, but I could not tell you what street.

After the debacle that was the 2023 Mets, and the fan base in the doldrums even by Mets standards, have a hard time seeing someone outbidding Cohen for Ohtani. Of course he might not want to leave California.

Waveland Ave. would be over the left field bleachers.
Sheffield Ave. would be over the right field bleachers.
The Addison train station is a block beyond Sheffield Ave. down the right field foul line.

Now you know.

Looks like the entire free agent market is hot for more teams than normal and a lot of quality players in demand

Unofficial reports have Ohtani signing with the Blue Jays.

It seemed like it was headed that way with the news over the past 24 hours. $600 mil+ I'm guessing.

They were +2000 at one point.

Talk seems to have been premature.

Definitely looks like it. I wouldn't be surprised if the Giants come out the winners here. They've been "in the running" the whole time and apparently no one inside the organization has been talking (which I've read is what Ohtani wanted, to keep it all secret)

I'm back to thinking the Dodgers.

What about the Angels? You never know what the hell is going to happen. I heard early on Ohtani was open to a shorter term deal since his pitching arm is recovering. The Angels kind of let him run his own show over there which could be attractive to him. He wants to do what he wants to do with no restrictions.


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Whatever happens, I think he will be able to feed his unnamed dog.

And there it is, Dodgers, $700 mil. Wow

For only 10 years. Unbelievable.

Yup. As I was saying. No surprise.

Wow, he must be worth a fortune in marketing to justify that type of spending on a guy who is going to be a DH for most of his career.

As much as some analysts try to gloss over it, he’s also going to spend a good amount of that time on the disabled list, based on his playing history……unless the MLB changes their stance on HGH and other PEDS, in the near future.

On the other hand, Dodgers owners aren’t going broke anytime soon, so might as well role the dice if it helps get them a couple titles over the next 10 years. Hell, for all I know, they might have the infrastructure in place to make their money back, just on TV and marketing deals in Japan.

Babe Ruth could rise from the dead, in his prime and I don't think you could justify spending $700 Million on him. This contract is absurd, too much money has proliferated the game. He's already had Tommy John twice at this point. He won't be able to even pitch next year.

Could not agree more. Ridiculous. Don't ever again tell me how evil the Yankees are, because you're full of BS if you do. This is absurd to the next level. I don't watch or listen to baseball business (no longer can we call them games).

We are LONG gone from the days of it being a game where most players were normal folks that happened to be talented at baseball. That held jobs in the offseason. The more they are paid, the more these athletes are put on a pedestal, the further we get away from the soul of the game.

It's hard to see how Ohtani can possibly live up to the expectations implied by his contract, although I'd love for him to try to get close. I just hope he doesn't become of those guys who stops running out ground balls, makes it rain at the strip clubs, and starts dating a reality TV star.

I don't think they're paying for the baseball player so much as the phenomenon.

Not completely unexpected, I laughed when people in this thread were stating 320ish for 6-8. There was never a chance he was going for less than 500 million, and a less likely chance it was anyone but the Dodgers.

That said, I didn’t expect the 10 year contract. Thus the 700 with the extra years is logical as they are likely to make 100 back in merch sales by opening day. Waiting to see the contract details as they should be interesting to keep their cap within earth’s atmosphere. Honestly expecting another Bobby Bonilla Day in the lexicon for the next few decades.

Apparently a lot of the money is deferred but the details were not yet available from the reports I saw last night.

The Dodgers acquire a huge international market with Ohtani on the team. He will be worth the money in terms of the revenue he'll generate. Not sure what 70 million a year looks like on the field, but he's a good investment.

He could buy 140 houses a year like mine with that kind of money.

That kind of money puts him out of touch with mere mortals. But that's okay. It's simply how it is today.

So we can rationalize and justify the Dodgers doing this, but if the Yankees do it, they're the pariah of all of sports?

Gimme a break with the nonsense, please.

Absolutely not. This will be looked at as the start of the downfall of the sport.


Casinos in the stadium, give me a break

This will probably end up as one of the worst contracts for a team ever signed if measured by on the field performance. It may well generate a profit in the end from all the race/nationalist fans who will buy the merch and follow the team. I would think that they very carefully did the math to ensure they won’t be losing that much in projected gains.

LOL, after all previous moments in modern baseball history, the moment where a historically unique, widely adored, and internationally celebrated unicorn of a basball player is paid what he is easily worth is the downfall? Just stop.

Make no mistake, the Dodgers will make 5-7 TIMES more than what this contract will pay out. And those projections are low per the current social media speculation out there.

I have enough saved TV and radio broadcasts, basically everything, to last the rest of my life...from those golden days of yore when the players wore baseball uniforms, lived in the same neighborhoods as their fans, worked jobs in the off season, and there were no "designated hitters" or 4 finger intentional walks or a man on 2nd to start the 10th inning or any of that garbage. And most specifically, no 9-figure player salaries. You can have this crap. Enjoy.

It would be interesting to know to what extent the profit projection depends on him staying healthy for how long.

Huge contract and scary but I think he will age well with it.
1. He is an internationally famous and now on a Big Market Team that always makes playoff. So the market revenue, etc will be thru the roof
2. He plays DH so he does not have the same wear and tear on body that players that play the field so he will less likely to hurt to the same extent as others.
3. As a pitcher(not in 2024) he pitches every 6 days so again less mileage on his body
4. He diet and exercise regimen is amazing so if anyone is going to play well on until the end of the contract it is him.
5. The fact that a lot of money is deferred helps keep LA with financial flexibly to get other players( and Right now they really need pitching)

Huge contract and scary but I think he will age well with it.
1. He is an internationally famous and now on a Big Market Team that always makes playoff. So the market revenue, etc will be thru the roof
2. He plays DH so he does not have the same wear and tear on body that players that play the field so he will less likely to hurt to the same extent as others.
3. As a pitcher(not in 2024) he pitches every 6 days so again less mileage on his body
4. He diet and exercise regimen is amazing so if anyone is going to play well on until the end of the contract it is him.
5. The fact that a lot of money is deferred helps keep LA with financial flexibly to get other players( and Right now they really need pitching)

Some humble thoughts / questions:

1. The Dodgers are going to have a menacing top of the order. Do you bat Ohtani second or third?

2. I think that whether Ohtani becomes a villain in the sport depends on how he handles himself, both on the field and off. If he starts to suck at the plate, that would obviously make everyone look bad. But if he performs like he has over the past three years at the plate and the Dodgers win the pennant (or more) next year, I think the headline $700 million figure will fade into the background. I reference again the poll done by The Athletic which found that 45% of major league players would choose to build a team around him. That kind of says a lot.

Off the field, if he douches out, that would be bad. But as others have pointed out, he seems to be widely adored, and that is usually not the case for closet douchebags. I wouldn't be surprised if you start seeing Ohtani-funded youth baseball programs not only in Japan (which he's done), but also in the LA area. Those sorts of actions will probably help him as well.

3. Someone implied that Ohtani's value is propped up by racial and nationalistic factors. I suppose there is some truth to that given how much Ohtani means to Japan (a huge economy with a relatively affluent fan base) and the Asian American baseball fan base in the US. But I'll go out on a limb and say that the hype around Ohtani would be same if not more if he were a white or black American.

4. I think people hate the Yankees because they've won 27 titles and the visceral disdain that Mets and Red Sox fans feel toward them are magnified in the media and the cultural lexicon. I suspect that a lot of people also find it annoying that the Yankees are the preferred team for non-baseball people trying to appropriate baseball culture. You know, like those fashionista types who are photographed wearing the pink, sparkly NY caps -- and the politicians....

Complete side note, My only gripe with these contracts nowadays is that I think too much money has permeated the sport, but then again the same thing could be said about life itself.

Teams should not be worth billions of dollars, athletes shouldn't be paid millions, a afternoon at the ballpark should still be an affordable option for a family of four. Gambling should not be as pervasive as it is. These are more my issues with society today though, rather than the contract itself.

The Dodgers lineup will be dangerous. They better hope, for their sake, that he's able to pitch again. Otherwise, he's not worth the money that he was given.

Guys I don't think you can look at the contract as Ohtani has to be good enough on the field to be worth 70 million dollars. I don't think anyone can be good enough on the field to earn 70 million through performance only. He'd have to hit 50 homers, win 20 games and be a top 2 MVP finalist every season for the next 10 years for his performance to be worth the money.

This is a business decision. Ohtani is the most popular baseball player in America and Japan. He dominates the entire world-wide market for the sport. I would guess he will generate in excess of 70 million for the Dodgers next year and pay for himself.

When it comes down to it...the Dodgers, and every other MLB team is a business. If he sells a Billion $'s in merchandise for them in the next 10 years, they really don't care whether he pitches again or not.

Personally, I have a hard time believing he's even going to be an extremely effective hitter his 1st year back from Tommy John surgery.

He's a left-handed batter, which means he uses his right arm for his extension and follow through. He's going to have to be very careful he doesn't hyperextend it while he's still healing from the surgery. I know it's a different motion from throwing, but he's still got to be careful.

This is exactly the point, he is essentially free. It had to be a California team for proximity to Japanese fans and the new product and distribution sales will more than make up for it. The only issue here is structuring salary and keeping luxury taxes under control. That's why my main interest in this is the dynamics of pay structure in the contact out of curiosity.

Some historical perspective from Joe Posnanski's blog:

"On March 8, 1930, Babe Ruth signed a two-year, $160,000 contract with the New York Yankees. This is probably the first famous sports contract in American history, but what is not as well remembered is that Ruth actually settled for that contract. He had stubbornly held out for months and had already turned down this exact contract. He wanted a three-year deal at $85,000 a year.

But as spring training began, Ruth began to waver. Sportswriters were in his ear telling him that owner Jacob Ruppert — famously known as “the Colonel” — would never give in to his demands and that $80,000 was a whole lot of money.

And on March 8, Ruth showed up at the Yankees’ spring training facility in St. Petersburg, Fla. — in cream-colored golf knickers, gray stockings, black-and-white-striped shoes and a dark jacket, according to the New York Daily News — and humbly tapped Ruppert on the shoulder and said: “My dear Colonel, could I see you for about 10 minutes?”

Five minutes later, they emerged from the meeting and Ruppert grandiosely pronounced: “Gentlemen, all I have to say is that Mr. Ruth has agreed to that two-year contract.”

At which point, Ruth reportedly said: “Hell’s bells? What time is it? Quarter after one? Hey, I gotta beat it to the ballpark!”

It was the biggest sports contract ever signed to that point — about $1.35 million in today’s dollars about $10,000 more per year than Ruth had been making. The big-city and small-town newspapers across the country — to offer some perspective about how much money that was — pointed out that Ruth would be drawing $5,000 more per year than President Herbert Hoover himself.

As the years went on, the contrast between Ruth’s salary and Hoover’s led to one of baseball’s all-time stories, one you’ve probably heard. Supposedly, Ruth was confronted with the fact that he would be getting paid more than President Hoover. He huffed and responded, “Hell, why not? I had a better year than he did.”

Not to be a party pooper, but that probably never happened. For one thing,

I cannot find an instance of Ruth saying it; the story didn’t emerge until the late 1940s, when Ruth was dying. In fact, the story only emerged because New York sportswriter Tom Meany kept telling it in his banquet speeches. In Meany’s version of the story, it was actually Ruppert himself who had told Ruth that he couldn’t pay him that much money because it was more than the President of the United States, to which Ruth replied, in some form, “So what? I had a better year.” But we can be almost entirely certain that didn’t happen; Ruth was not that sort of conversationalist and, as we know, Ruppert readily offered him $80,000 per year and Ruth turned it down.

My guess is that Meany came up with the funny line himself during some bull session with other sportswriters and then attributed it to Ruth because it sounded better that way.

Anyway, to the point: In 1930, Babe Ruth made $5,000 more per year than the President of the United States.

In 2024, Shohei Ohtani will make — I kid you not — 175 times more than the President of the United States.

If he never pitches again ,
at $700 million for 10 years ,
he will be making more than $100,000 per at bat
( unless he has more than 700 at bats a year)

Bryce Harper came back from Tommy John surgery in about 5 1/2 months. He hit for a decent average early on but didn't have much power for his first few months back. By the end of the season, he seemed to be back to his normal self hitting. It will be interesting to see if Ohtani has a similar recovery and if his power will also take more time to return than his hitting does.

$680 out of $700 million deferred. That's hard to believe.

Yep. Capitalism sucks.

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