The numbers have never quite encapsulated Shohei Ohtani. Historic greatness doesn’t fit neatly into a spreadsheet. To observe that he ranks third in baseball in ERA (2.84) among starting pitchers over the past three years while also ranking second in OPS (.964), while true, does not at all capture the feeling of watching him spin a sweeper past a baffled hitter for strike three, then trot to the plate two and a half minutes later and blast a home run that leaves the outfielders standing slack-jawed.
Still, if you had to pick a figure that summed up the most talented player in the history of the sport, $700 million is as good as any. On Saturday, Ohtani posted to Instagram that he had agreed to terms with the Dodgers; his agent, Nez Balelo, confirmed that he will make $700 million over 10 years, the largest contract in sports history. A person familiar with the deal said it included unprecedented deferrals, which he added were Ohtani’s idea and which are designed both to confer tax benefits to him and to lower his luxury-tax hit so the team can maintain payroll flexibility.
Ohtani is expected to serve as the team’s designated hitter immediately while he rehabs the left ulnar collateral ligament he tore on Aug. 23 and on which he had surgery on Sept. 19. (He has declined to name the procedure, but the Los Angeles Times has reported that it was his second Tommy John surgery.) Balelo has said Ohtani will be ready to pitch again in 2025.
Kohjiro Kinno/Sports Illustrated
Ohtani’s deal, which will pay him $70 million annually, surpasses the deals signed by soccer stars Lionel Messi ($675 million with FC Barcelona) and Kylian Mbappé ($678 million with Paris St-Germain) and shatters the previous MLB high in total value (the 12-year, $426.5 million extension Mike Trout signed with the Angels before the 2019 season), the previous MLB free-agent high in total value (the nine-year, $360 million deal Aaron Judge signed with the Yankees before last season) and the previous high in average annual value (the $43.3 million Max Scherzer makes annually on the three-year, $130 million deal he signed with the Mets before the ’22 season).
It also solves a mystery that has captivated the sport since well before free agency opened on Nov. 6. Ohtani, who has not addressed the media since Aug. 9, five weeks before he underwent surgery, has declined all year to comment on his goals during this process. Did he seek money, fame, glory?
His first foray into free agency, when he left the NPB in favor of MLB before the 2018 season, was similarly opaque. By making the move before age 25, at which point MLB stops capping international players’ bonuses, he forewent perhaps $200 million, and he signed a rookie deal with the Angels, a younger-brother team without a recent history of success. Over his six years there, he never really explained what had drawn him to Anaheim.
And he never expressed much interest in returning, at least publicly. His most revelatory comment on his contract status in spring training was, “This is my last year, and I’m aware of that.”
The silence this winter extended to nearly everyone who interacted with him: ESPN reported that his camp told teams that any information that got out about meetings with him would ding their prospects. At one point during the winter meetings this week, Blue Jays GM Ross Atkins rescheduled his in-person media availability to Zoom and refused to say where he was. It was later reported that he’d been in Dunedin, Fl., showing Ohtani his team’s new $100 million renovation to its spring training facility. No one with the Blue Jays ever confirmed the report. The next day, when Dodgers manager Dave Roberts acknowledged that the team had met with Ohtani and considered him its “top priority,” fans spent 24 hours arguing about whether that constituted an impermissible breach. (Evidently it did not.) Ohtani has refused to share his off-season location, his timeline or criteria for deciding, even the name of his dog.
His Instagram post did not address why he had made his decision but promised that he “would like to talk more about this again at a later press conference.”
His choice caps a frenzied 24 hours in which one erroneous report claimed he had already chosen the Blue Jays, another one claimed he was aboard a private jet from Los Angeles, where he is thought to live in the offseason, to Toronto, and a tweet by an opera singer that Blue Jays lefty Yusei Kikuchi had rented out an entire sushi restaurant near the ballpark. When the jet, which fans had tracked feverishly, landed in Toronto, Canadian businessman and Shark Tank star Robert Herjavec stepped out and confirmed Ohtani had never been inside.
Instead Ohtani was wrapping up negotiations with the Dodgers, who had been thought from the outset to be the favorites. The Dodgers play 30 miles (or an hour or so in traffic) north of Ohtani’s former home, Angel Stadium, so he may not even have to move. And for a man who has never played on a winning team in his six years in Anaheim, the Dodgers can offer a level of and commitment to success that is virtually unparalleled in the sport: They have won 10 of the last 11 division titles and played in three World Series in that time, winning one. They employ two of the best hitters in the sport, second baseman Mookie Betts and first baseman Freddie Freeman, and although injuries have thinned their rotation, they expect ace Walker Buehler and All-Star Tony Gonsolin to pitch again this year. They might also be able to re-sign future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw. And they would seem to be an attractive free-agent destination now that they have the most talented player in history.
Ohtani’s deal also carries risk. He will not pitch in 2024, and it is impossible to know for sure whether he ever will again. Even if his second Tommy John surgery works, he has already proven that his body cannot handle the strain of pitching and hitting full time. At some point, he and the Dodgers will eventually have to navigate the aging process. For how much longer can he keep doing both? What if the player and the team disagree on that answer?
Those are problems for another day. Today, the Dodgers and their fans celebrate. Today, a sport gets the answer it has breathlessly awaited. Today, a new era begins in Los Angeles. Maybe now he’ll tell us the name of the dog.
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