10 years. $700 million.
Those are the eye-popping numbers on the unprecedented contract Shohei Ohtani will be signing with the Dodgers. The 2023 unanimous AL MVP made the announcement himself on Saturday afternoon.
The $700,000,000 is obviously the largest player contract in sports history – and will likely hold the top spot for a while. The inner workings of the deal involve deferred payments, so Ohtani's annual salary (reflected in LA's annual payrolls) will be in the $50 million range.
Ohtani, who turns 30 next July, had elbow surgery in mid-September and will not pitch in 2024. Which will hurt his chances to be crowned the unanimous NL MVP next fall.
The 2023 Dodgers became the first team to win 100+ games in four consecutive full seasons (106, 106, 111, 100). And now they've added the most complete player in baseball history.
In other news, the Red Sox made a rare deal of substance with the Yankees, sending Alex Verdugo, who completely wore out his welcome with manager Alex Cora, to the Bronx for a trio of right-handed pitchers (Richard Fitts, Greg Weissert, and Nicholas Judice). Fitts was named the Eastern League Pitcher of the Year for 2023.
The MFY also traded for Juan Soto, who is set to become a free agent after next season. With any luck, this will simply be a one-year rental. But it sucks, no matter how you slice it. Maybe Verdugo can do us a favour and sabotage some shit over there.
Hey, Yoshinobu Yamamoto . . . umm, you wanna come to Boston and finish in last place?
2 comments:
I know there was talk about him getting $50M per season, but... wow.
For reference, the next highest per season rate is Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander at $43.3M per year, followed by Jacob deGrom and Aaron Judge at $40M per year. Scherzer, by the way, just had surgery that will likely keep him on the IL for the first half of the 2024 season.
Ohtani will actually only receive $2M per season over those ten years as he's deferred the rest of his salary over ten years following the end of this contract (2034-2043). The $70M per season still counts towards the luxury tax calculations. This seems to be the norm now: contracts deferring a percentage of the salary. For example, Devers will receive $236.5M over the 11 years of his contract, which officially becomes active this coming year, and the remaining $75M will be paid over the 10 years after that.
Spotrac dot com has all of this information, and there are all sorts of interesting nuggets. For example, did you know the Red Sox will be paying Eric Hosmer $740K in 2024? He got $720K last season, and he'll get another $760K in 2025. This is a guy who had 50 plate appearances in 14 games for Boston in late 2022.
(Also still on the books: Dustin Pedroia for $12M over the next five seasons and Manny Ramirez for $6.1M over the next three season. Manny has actually been receiving deferred payments from Boston since 2011!)
Nervously refreshing the news every 5 minutes awaiting Yamamoto's decision. I would like to believe that the time zone along favors the Dodgers over Boston and New York.
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