Look homeward, Angel, now, and melt with Ruth

December 10, 2023 12:52 PM

To all the fans and everyone involved in the baseball world, I apologize for taking so long to come to a decision. I have decided to choose the Dodgers as my next team. [Instagram]

Shohei Ohtani’s $700 Million Dodgers Contract Is Unlike Anything in MLB History [The Ringer]
$700M stunner: Ohtani to Dodgers on biggest deal in sports history [MLB]
Six Wild Facts That Show Just How Massive Shohei Ohtani's $700 Million Contract Is [Sports Illustrated]
The Dodgers are the new Angels [X; nitter]

Shohei Ohtani, previously

posted by chavenet (38 comments total)

Now I will be in the position of rooting for a player while rooting against his team at the same time... sigh.
posted by mikeand1 at 12:58 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

BlueJays fans just had the most exhausting and deflating weekend. Good for Shohei, he deserves it...but may his success be limited to the National League.
posted by dogbusonline at 1:03 PM on December 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

"As inscrutable as the 29-year-old’s preference...." 8-|
posted by Roentgen at 1:21 PM on December 10, 2023 [7 favorites]

In retrospect, it seems unlikely he would leave Southern California, even more money than the entire team payroll of eight different clubs.
posted by ob1quixote at 1:24 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

As a giant Atlanta Braves fan, I absolutely welcome this. I was terrified the Braves were going to break character* and actually seriously try to land this guy, who will never pitch again at the MLB level, and while a remarkably good hitter, isn't worth anything like the price he was going to wind up with. I wouldn't be surprised at all to find out that the Braves had bid for him just to yank the Dodgers' chain. In fairness to the Dodgers, they actually won't lose money on this deal (because of merchandise, mostly), but it won't get them anywhere closer to a title, for the giant chunk of the payroll it takes up.

* The Braves' upper management is uniquely good at finding players they can improve for a reasonable price rather than paying too much for free agents (Marcell Ozuna being the outlier here), though like all the rest of Braves country, am really concerned about starting pitching for next year.
posted by outgrown_hobnail at 1:31 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

Ohtoni turns down a one billion cdn contract and settles for just 700 million usd.
posted by srboisvert at 1:37 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

I just want to say thanks for the title of the post. It has made my morning!
posted by Calvin and the Duplicators at 2:34 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

Friday was a real roller coaster. The rumours, the sushi, the airplane... It's a bit of a letdown that he ended up exactly where everyone assumed he would. I don't think Blue Jays fans imagined they had a legitimate shot (except for those who somehow think that Rogers got to be as big as it is by willing to throw close to a billion Canadian dollars at a baseball player) and the glimmers of hope on Friday were something else. I was texting with a few other fans who confessed to being able to focus on nothing else during the day.

I'm a bit disappointed that me being in an Eastern time zone means most of his games will take place after my bed time, but I'm happy that I'm alive as a baseball fan while he's playing.
posted by synecdoche at 2:41 PM on December 10, 2023 [2 favorites]

Can’t blame the guy, he deserves to play for a contender, and who is going to turn down 70M a year, but as an Angels fan this was like getting dumped by your girlfriend and then seeing her arm in arm with your least favorite person on earth.
posted by The Gooch at 2:43 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

Yeah, no surprise, and as awesome and likable -- and immensely marketable -- as Ohtani is, it's a vast overpay.

I'd love to see both the wording and the price tag of the insurance policy the Dodgers took out on this contract.
posted by martin q blank at 3:01 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

Pardon my ignorance, but what sort of non-sports employee makes $70,000,000 a year doing their job?
posted by njohnson23 at 3:22 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

I realize this isn't quite what njohnson23 means, but about 15 or so of these guys make that much.
posted by martin q blank at 3:35 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

Boo. Honestly, this feels a lot like Kevin Durant joining the Warriors, and like that, it’s already affected how I feel about the player. I mean, it’s not like he went to the Yankees, but it’s pretty close. He seems like an awesome guy, and it’s always fun to hear about his exploits, but the lovable underdog thing is long gone now. No more exciting Tungsten Arm O’Doyle stories, all those exploits (amazing ones, to be sure) will happen in victories.

I wish the guy well, he deserves to win, but I wish it wasn’t like that.


Honestly, my rooting interest is solidly with the Chiba Lotte Marines, and I’d hoped for the crazy scenario where he just decides he wants to come back to Japan and for some reason sign here. Failing that, the Cubs, since I’d be able to take advantage of the explosion of “see Ohtani play” hotel/flight packages when I wanted to visit family.
posted by Ghidorah at 3:37 PM on December 10, 2023 [5 favorites]

Crazy that that list of overpaid CEOs, has no names that I am familiar with…
posted by Windopaene at 4:03 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

This defector article is good read about it: Shohei Ohtani just got super-super paid
posted by awfurby at 4:48 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

this guy, who will never pitch again at the MLB level

It’s possible, but I wouldn’t actually put money on it.

The big round figure makes for a splashy headline, but as the articles all point out, with the deferred payments, the actual cost to the Dodgers over time is significantly less than the $700 million on the sticker.
posted by zamboni at 4:59 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

> I don't think Blue Jays fans imagined they had a legitimate shot...

I'm not a Jays fan or even an MLB fan, really, but I have friends who are both and I can tell you that there were Jays fans who very much did allow themselves to imagine that they had more than a legitimate shot yesterday.
posted by The Card Cheat at 5:50 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

Seattle waves to the hated Toronto…
posted by Windopaene at 7:11 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

BlueJays fans just had the most exhausting and deflating weekend.

we've had 30 years of (mostly) exhausting and deflating weekends so you'd think we be used to it by now but no.
posted by ZaphodB at 7:55 PM on December 10, 2023 [3 favorites]

but what sort of non-sports employee makes $70,000,000 a year doing their job?

Chris Dillow has written a lot about the factors that go into the very large comparative pay of athletes. The short version is that it's much less about pay as a compensation for labour (as it is for your work, and mine), but rather a fee for not going and playing somewhere else, or retiring. They're not really extracting a wage for work, so much as a rent.

The only other sort of non-sports employee who makes that kind of wage is the head of a very large firm, who makes it in the same way footballers do: not relative to their production (goals scored, home runs hit) but relative to their bargaining position, and ability to extract surplus by leveraging their power.
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 7:55 PM on December 10, 2023 [6 favorites]

With the combo of high risk of career ending injury and time spent waiting for a call up earning nothing or peanuts, it's best to look at sports salaries the way you would lottery payouts. The mathematical expectation across the range of athletes is not as ridiculous as it looks at first glance.

That said, 700 million, wow.
posted by BrotherCaine at 8:15 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

In retrospect, it seems unlikely he would leave Southern California,

Under the terms of this contract, by 2045 he will own Southern California.
posted by delfin at 8:25 PM on December 10, 2023 [4 favorites]

As a Yankees fan, this is terrific news. We get Juan Soto, the Blue Jays get...nothing (yet).

Never thought LeBron could or would get upstaged in LA.
posted by JohnnyGunn at 9:06 PM on December 10, 2023 [1 favorite]

It's the entertainment industry. A corporation will pay top performers way more than what you might think a person should be paid for hitting a ball (or pretending to be someone else or singing a song) because otherwise those stars will just go make similar money for a competing corporation.
posted by pracowity at 12:31 AM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

As a Jays fan, I always assumed the Dodgers were going to get him. There was only one point where I wavered - when Rogers (who owns both the Blue Jays and the Sportsnet network) changed their schedule to put out a special edition of Blair & Barker's baseball commentary. But then the two of them spent the hour basically wondering what the hell was going on, and I knew that meant he wasn't coming to Toronto. Typical Rogers move, they had no intention of spending anything to get Ohtani but they couldn't resist goosing the ratings for an afternoon.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 1:51 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

The move makes sense for both Ohtani and the Dodgers, but as a Guardians fan, seeing this one player make more than our entire payroll really stings. Baseball really needs to figure out some sort of salary floor system, or just go ahead an contract to about 8 teams, because the inequality is just killing small market teams.
posted by HVACDC_Bag at 2:42 AM on December 11, 2023 [4 favorites]

seeing this one player make more than our entire payroll really stings.

He's making more than eight different teams, true. But two of those teams made the playoffs and one had a better record than the Dodgers last year. If one player could make that much of a difference to a team, then the Angels would be multiple WS winners.

Cleveland may not have the big payroll, but I see them as a regular threat to win.
posted by GhostintheMachine at 3:33 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Ohtoni turns down a one billion cdn contract and settles for just 700 million usd.

Under the current exchange rate, CA$1 billion = US$740 million. More, yes, but proportionally not a huge difference.
posted by eviemath at 3:44 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

It is still possible for the Dodgers to sign Orix ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto so they may not even need Ohtani to pitch for the time being.
posted by LostInUbe at 4:34 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I know this is rampant throughout sports, but can we pause on this: "$48,010 per inning". I mean, how many people who are living in poverty would be happy to make that in a year. (For context, to make that in a year, you'd need a rate of $23 per hour.)

Again, I know he's not the root of this, but man, it's just hard to see.
posted by hydra77 at 8:42 AM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don’t think the Blue Jays were seriously in the running. MLB needs to capitalize on the star power and excitement around this once in a hundred year talent. That means a big media market and a team with an international brand / fan base. MLB had to get him on the biggest stage possible. At least he isn’t going to the Yankees.
posted by interogative mood at 8:48 AM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I had brief dreams on Friday and Saturday about Ohtani signing for the Jays. I'm increasingly more of a fair weather sports fan so him signing would have kept me somewhat interested in baseball before September and maybe he'd help us actually advance in the post-season (not that it happened with the Angels). My spouse is from Japan though and they were dreading Ohtani signing and then all of their father's friends coming to visit so that they could see him play.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 1:15 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

Huh, it looks like the whole Ohtani contract got a little more interesting with reports that he's deferring all but $2 million of his salary each year so that the Dodgers can go out and sign even more players. I wonder how many other players they can sign on similar terms and then leave the deferred payments as a "future Dodgers" problem.
posted by any portmanteau in a storm at 5:20 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

reports that he's deferring all but $2 million of his salary...then leave the deferred payments as a "future Dodgers" problem

I know sports financing is insanely complicated, but hoping to get some info on two questions.

1) Why does baseball seem to uniquely (among big US sports) sometimes go for these heavily future-based contracts. I'm thinking also of stuff like Bobby Bonilla day.

2) In general, doesn't this hyperbolic borrowing create the opportunity for 'tobigtofail' clubs that mortgage the future for a title run but then need rescuing or they'd consider bankruptcy? You figure a franchise like the Dodgers will always find a bailout suitor. But as a league rule, it seems to incentivize unwanted risky behavior that undermines sustainability.
posted by Reasonably Everything Happens at 7:26 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

I wonder how many other players they can sign on similar terms and then leave the deferred payments as a "future Dodgers" problem.

They can do five more, and still have all that deferred money covered by their existing local broadcast deal up until at least 2037.

Also, the reason basically only Ohtani can make this deal happen is that he already makes $50m+ a year in non-baseball related activities. No one can afford to take basically the veteran league minimum for a decade and then get paid for real when they are about to hit 40.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:24 PM on December 11, 2023 [2 favorites]

1) Why does baseball seem to uniquely (among big US sports) sometimes go for these heavily future-based contracts. I'm thinking also of stuff like Bobby Bonilla day.

Because the people who know how money works use that knowledge to their advantage. It got skewed a bit because it depended on investment returns that ended up being bullshit (Madoff), but both the Mets and Bonilla benefited greatly from that deal.

Hockey was actually the worse for deferrals, but the league and player's union stopped it because teams without deep pockets didn't like how dudes getting signed for deals way into their late 40s allowed the richer teams more flexibility

You figure a franchise like the Dodgers will always find a bailout suitor.

Bailout? Lol.

The Dodgers would need to sign like 50 Ohtanis before their ownership would even start sweating. Dodgers are probably worth $10B these days and that's just a small part of the Guggenheim Parters holdings.

Also, not sure what you would even use as comparison to money printing press that is the Dodgers, except perhaps actual money printing presses. It was wasn't for the luxury taxes, the Dodgers would have a yearly payroll well on the way to a billion dollars, instead of only a quarter billion like they do now. There is absolutely no chance the Dodgers go into financial distress unless baseball no longer exists because of global nuclear war or worse.
posted by Back At It Again At Krispy Kreme at 9:43 PM on December 11, 2023 [1 favorite]

No one can afford to take basically the veteran league minimum for a decade and then get paid for real when they are about to hit 40.

He's still making 2 million a year isn't he? It is quite a step down from 70 but I'm pretty sure that'll allow one to live more than comfortably until the big paycheck kicks in.
posted by Mitheral at 5:30 AM on December 12, 2023 [2 favorites]

And there it is: Sources: Japanese star Yamamoto goes to Dodgers for 12 years, $325M
posted by LostInUbe at 8:43 PM on December 21, 2023