When free agency started, no one really knew what Shohei Ohtani wanted.
Sure, he was going to get the biggest contract in American sports history, but what else? Did he want to play on the West Coast or did he not really care about that? Did he want to be the center of attention or did he want to be just part of the team? Did he want privacy, or familiarity, or for the media to lay off, or for an entire country to love him, or to be the biggest Japanese star in team history? And how was the dog involved, huh? HOW WAS THE DOG INVOLVED?
It turned out to be simple: The guy wants to win a bunch of games, and he wants to be paid a bunch of money, eventually, and the best team to ensure both of those things happen is the Los Angeles Dodgers.
We still don’t know how the dog was involved, though.
Yes, after days of whining from baseball writers about how the lack of leaks made his free agency less fun, and after about an hour on Friday when everyone thought Ohtani was going to the Blue Jays, on Sautrday he signed a 10 year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers, finally giving them the middle-of-the-order star that they’ve been lacking for so long. The Dodgers, though, will have to pay him $70 million a year, which even for an organization as rich and successful as they are, is still a lot of money. I wouldn’t be surprised if Ohtani’s salary made them unable to go after other premium free agents for a long, long time.
(puts finger to ear, as if I have an earpiece there, which I do not, and also this bit really only makes sense in a visual medium, not a textual one)
They’re deferring HOW much???
The Dodgers, in addition to signing perhaps the top free agent in baseball history, will only be paying him $2 million per year during his 10 year contract. The other $68 million will be deferred for 10 years, so starting in 2034, when Ohtani is 39 years old, he will start earning amounts of money that are extremely large and incredibly round until 2043.
For context, in the year 2043, Taylor Swift will turn 54 years old, Tom Brady will turn 66, and George Clooney will be a sprightly 82.
If you’re worrying about Ohtani’s financial health in the present, well, good news: he’s said to be earning around $50 million a year in endorsements, so he’ll be able to get by until the Dodgers start paying him those large checks. The deferrals will not only allow the team more payroll space in the short term, but the smaller present-day value of the money ($68 million in 2034 is worth less than $68 million in 2024 because of inflation) will reduce their luxury tax bill by $24 million a year.
So, to sum up, not only did the Dodgers sign the best baseball player in the world, who is both a great hitter and a great pitcher (though admittedly coming off a second Tommy John surgery, so he won’t be pitching during the upcoming season), but they don’t even have to take the full financial hit from his massive contract in the present moment. Also, if they stock some cash away every year, they’ll be able to earn interest on it for a decade — Ohtani’s deferrals are interest-free — and thereby lessen the future financial hit.
All of which is to say, fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.
Look, it’s possible the contract doesn’t work. Maybe Ohtani doesn’t come back as a dominant pitcher, or his swing doesn’t age that well, or some crap like that. But you know and I know that neither of those things is going to happen. The Dodgers will get everything they want and it will go perfectly, because that is the way the world works. They have Freddie Freeman until 2027, Mookie Betts until 2032, and Ohtani until 2033, and they’re working on signing Yoshinobu Yamamoto as we speak. If not him, they’ll get Josh Hader or Blake Snell or they’ll trade for Tyler Glasnow.
This is it. This is forever. This is eternal. We are in the long night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods. Did I personally write that sentence or take it from some mysterious source that no one could ever guess? Look, these are hard times and it’s important we don’t all turn on each other.
The point is, the Dodgers got everything they could ever want, and next, they’re going to get more. They’re going to be more. They’re going to win every game next season, win every World Series for the next decade, eliminate the Diamondbacks from existence with a thought, and worst of all, keep the Giants around just so they can win 130 consecutive games against them because we chose wrong and we are wrong and we should feel that burden every day until we die and we-
(breathes into a paper bag for a while)
Sorry, it’s okay. I’m okay now. It’s going to be okay.
Just not on the field.
The Dodgers are not just better than the Giants now. They are cartoonishly better. The Dodgers will be better than the Giants for years to come, and it is ludicrous to think otherwise. Sure, maybe the Giants bust decades of precedent and sign Yamomoto and Snell and Jung Hoo Lee, and maybe the prospects develop at the major league level, and maybe all the hitters don’t fall apart in the second half in 2024, and the Dodgers will still be better.
Right now, as you look at the Dodgers and the Giants, there just isn’t a path for the Giants to be the better team going forward. I mean, you can construct a “If all the Dodgers get hurt and all the Giants turn into All-Stars” hypothetical, but if we’re being realistic, there’s just no way.
And the twist of the knife: every last bit of this, from the team to the structure of the contract to the amount of money, is exactly what Shohei Ohtani wanted. He wanted to go to the Dodgers from Day One of free agency. He wanted to defer all that money so that the team could get more players around him. That Blue Jays story was a plant by his team so that the Dodgers and only the Dodgers would give him more money. The Giants were not in it. The Giants were never going to be in it. That’s not where they are, and that’s not who they are.
It’s not a fun realization. It might be fun to power up MLB The Show, throw a shutout with Anthony DeSclafani and watch Casey Schmitt hit two homers against the Dodgers, but real baseball won’t be that cathartic. Ohtani’s plan worked. The Dodgers’ plan worked. The Giants are scrambling, and will have to scramble forever.
In 2018, the Giants hired Farhan Zaidi to bring the Dodger philosophy to San Francisco, to create that mighty farm system and throw around money like a Smart Rich Team, and lead the team into its new era, when it would be right there with the top teams in the league year in, year out. It is plain to see that that has not happened. The magic stayed in Southern California. Maybe it hates fog. I don’t know. But right now, the Giants are in a tier below the Dodgers, and that’s where they’ll stay, unless they drop to two tiers below the Dodgers.
It’s brutal. It sucks. It’s how it is. The Giants never really had a chance to get Ohtani. He obviously got lots of money, but what he really wanted was the Dodgers organization. The Giants couldn’t have ever offered that. The hype about Farhan was that he would make the Giants into that kind of organization. He didn’t. Probably no one could have. But the upshot is: The Giants are a second tier franchise, and Shohei Ohtani is on the Dodgers. Both of those things are awful. But at least they’re even worse together.
This is spot on.
The Giants are a second division team. The Dodgers are a first division team. They aren’t competitive with one another. There is no rivalry. And Ohtani chose LAD bc he knew that. And his choice and deferred contract reinforces that.
Grim, but accurate, Maestro.