DALLAS — When the news broke, the number was staggering, its enormity difficult to wrangle.
Only 366 days have flipped by since the Los Angeles Dodgers and Shohei Ohtani agreed to a 10-year, $700 million contract. At first glance, the figure was mind-boggling, headline-catching. It was also, far and away, the largest outlay in MLB history, shattering the 12-year, $426 million extension Mike Trout had inked with Ohtani’s former club, the Los Angeles Angels, less than five years earlier.
But as details trickled out, the agreement assumed a more complex sheen. A whopping $680 million — $68 million per season — would be deferred until the 10 years were up. Ohtani would take home just $2 million per season during his playing tenure with the Dodgers. The mammoth leftovers would be doled out later, from 2034 to 2043, in $68 million annual increments.
That abnormal structure lowered the present-day value of Ohtani’s contract from $700 million to somewhere in the $460 million range, depending on the rate of inflation. An outlandish sum, to be sure, but no longer an otherworldly, unprecedented figure.
And now, in the wake of Juan Soto’s landmark 15-year, $765 million deal with the New York Mets, Ohtani’s pact with the Dodgers looks like an epic bargain.
Soto’s deal actually is what Ohtani’s contract initially looked like: singular, record-smashing, incomprehensible. Unlike Ohtani’s, Soto’s contract features no deferred money. It has a $75 million signing bonus and an opt-out after year five. The value of that agreement, negotiated by agent Scott Boras, really is $765 million, more than $300 million beyond Ohtani’s estimated figure.
It is a preposterous number, one propelled to stratospheric heights by a fierce bidding war between Mets owner Steve Cohen and Yankees owner Hal Steinbrenner. The flames of that furious showdown were stoked, quite expertly, by Boras, who pitted the two billionaires against each other to drive up the price.
Ohtani and his representative, Nez Balelo, did not pursue that strategy as aggressively during his free agency. It became apparent early in Ohtani’s process that he preferred to stay on the West Coast. Neither the Yankees nor the Mets were seriously involved. That limited the ultimate ceiling, something Ohtani appeared altogether unconcerned about, given his immense marketability.
The scale of Ohtani’s popularity is another separator between the 2024 NL MVP and Soto, a generational talent in his own right. A recent report from Jack Harris of the L.A. Times estimated that the Dodgers earned nine figures worth of revenue from their new star in 2024.
To be fair, Ohtani’s first year in Dodger blue was, admittedly, a perfect storm. Winning MVP and a World Series in year one was beyond anyone’s wildest dreams and certainly helped bolster his financial impact. Yet as many experts predicted, the advertising windfall that accompanies Ohtani essentially pays for the contract.
Soto, an extremely popular player, doesn’t have nearly that level of influence. He is a great hitter, a future Hall of Famer even, but he’s not a global cultural icon in the mold of Ohtani. Soto’s arrival in Queens will sell tickets and invigorate the fan base, yes. But it will not put hundreds of millions of dollars in ad revenue per year back into the Mets’ pockets.
Such things matter little to Cohen, who is one of the richest people on Earth. But the dynamic provides a magnificent reminder that one year after the initial sticker shock, Ohtani’s “$700 million” deal already looks like a bargain.
