Veteran star Shohei Ohtani rocked baseball to its core this past weekend when it was announced that he was signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers on a record-breaking 10-year, $700 million deal.
He further rocked it to its core on Monday when the structure of that contract was revealed.
Per Jeff Passan of ESPN:
Shohei Ohtani's $700 million contract calls for him to be paid only $2 million a year for the next 10 seasons, with $680 million deferred until the end of the deal, sources confirm to ESPN. The CBT hit on the contract is going to be around $46 million, a huge discount for L.A.
The structure of the deal, first reported by @FabianArdaya, is unprecedented. Multiple people involved have said Ohtani proposed the structure and that toward the end of negotiations he said he wanted to defer his salary. His off-the-field earnings are significant enough for it.
There's a lot to unpack here and some further details on how this all works wil certainly come out in the future, but upon first glance...
1) This is insane. There are backup catchers around the league making more than $2 million per year. The fact that the most talented player in the league is only making that much is weird to see.
2) Ohtani will make $68 million per year in deferred money after the contract is over? You talk about Bobby Bonilla Day? I think we can move on from that one!
3) Is this good for baseball? It's too early to say. While in theory, more teams could use this method as a way of signing bigger stars, this could also just be a tool used by bigger market teams to gobble up an even further percentage of the talent. That would not be good for baseball.
4) If the Dodgers use the $25 million in CBT savings to go out and buy more players, the league could just become the LA Dodgers Invitational, which isn't what anyone really wants to see.
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