It’s strange: I have so much to say about the Dodgers signing Shohei Ohtani to a 10-year, $700 million deal … and also so little to say, because I get the sense that everybody has already said just about everything I’ve been thinking.
I don’t say this as a knock; this is just where we are. It has felt like everything I’ve read about Ohtani and the Dodgers and the money and the process and the marketing and the reporting has sounded more or less the same. Again, it’s not a knock; it’s not like I have anything new or interesting to say, either. I just don’t think there’s much insightful stuff to say just yet.
Ohtani is great. The contract is huge. The Dodgers are loaded. Baseball needs Ohtani to be its brightest star. Ohtani broke the news himself. Baseball reporters did not cover themselves in glory. Etc.
So I’ll just give you a whole bunch of notes I made about Ohtani and maybe you can make something useful of it yourself.
On March 8, 1930, Babe Ruth signed a two-year, $160,000 contract with the New York Yankees. This is probably the first famous sports contract in American history, but what is not as well remembered is that Ruth actually settled for that contract. He had stubbornly held out for months and had already turned down this exact contract. He wanted a three-year deal at $85,000 a year.
But as spring training began, Ruth began to waver. Sportswriters were in his ear telling him that owner Jacob Ruppert—famously known as “the Colonel”—would never give in to his demands and that $80,000 was a whole lot of money.
And on March 8, Ruth showed up at the Yankees’ spring training facility in St. Petersburg, Fla.—in cream-colored golf knickers, gray stockings, black-and-white-striped shoes and a dark jacket, according to the New York Daily News—and humbly tapped Ruppert on the shoulder and said: “My dear Colonel, could I see you for about 10 minutes?”
Five minutes later, they emerged from the meeting and Ruppert grandiosely pronounced: “Gentlemen, all I have to say is that Mr. Ruth has agreed to that two-year contract.”
At which point, Ruth reportedly said: “Hell’s bells? What time is it? Quarter after one? Hey, I gotta beat it to the ballpark!”
It was the biggest sports contract ever signed to that point—about $1.35 million in today’s dollars about $10,000 more per year than Ruth had been making. The big-city and small-town newspapers across the country—to offer some perspective about how much money that was—pointed out that Ruth would be drawing $5,000 more per year than President Herbert Hoover himself.
As the years went on, the contrast between Ruth’s salary and Hoover’s led to one of baseball’s all-time stories, one you’ve probably heard. Supposedly, Ruth was confronted with the fact that he would be getting paid more than President Hoover. He huffed and responded, “Hell, why not? I had a better year than he did.”
Not to be a party pooper, but that probably never happened. For one thing,
I cannot find an instance of Ruth saying it; the story didn’t emerge until the late 1940s, when Ruth was dying. In fact, the story only emerged because New York sportswriter Tom Meany kept telling it in his banquet speeches. In Meany’s version of the story, it was actually Ruppert himself who had told Ruth that he couldn’t pay him that much money because it was more than the President of the United States, to which Ruth replied, in some form, “So what? I had a better year.” But we can be almost entirely certain that didn’t happen; Ruth was not that sort of conversationalist and, as we know, Ruppert readily offered him $80,000 per year and Ruth turned it down.
My guess is that Meany came up with the funny line himself during some bull session with other sportswriters and then attributed it to Ruth because it sounded better that way.
Anyway, to the point: In 1930, Babe Ruth made $5,000 more per year than the President of the United States.
In 2024, Shohei Ohtani will make—I kid you not—175 times more than the President of the United States.
Joe Posnanski has been called "contemporary sports writing's biggest star." For more stories from Joe, subscribe to his Joe Blogs Substack newsletter at joeposnanski.com, where he writes about sports, pop culture, life, and all manner of nonsense.
Here are the MVP results for the last six seasons of the top three hitters in the Los Angeles Dodgers presumptive 2024 lineup:
2018: Mookie Betts won (AL); Freddie Freeman 4th (NL); Shohei Ohtani DNP
2019: Betts 8th (AL); Freeman 8th (NL); Ohtani DNP
2020: Freeman won (NL); Betts 2nd (AL); Ohtani DNP
2021: Ohtani won (AL); Freeman 9th (NL); Betts DNP
2022: Ohtani 2nd (AL); Freeman 4th (NL); Betts 5th (NL)
2023: Ohtani won (AL); Betts 2nd (NL); Freeman 3rd (NL)
There used to be a time when sports scoops lasted. This was in the days of daily newspapers, when a scoop such as a coach getting fired or a player signing a free-agent deal or a trade happening might appear in a newspaper one morning or afternoon and everybody would have to spend the next 12-to-24 hours trying to catch up or, alternatively, try to throw cold water on the scoop.
Obviously, it has been many years since a transactional story like that was broken in an actual print newspaper; these days, such scoops are measured in nano-seconds. America is tethered to the phone and the refresh button, and the race is on to be the first to pierce cyberspace with the news of this player’s injury status or that player’s contract details or this person’s reaction to something or that person’s job status.
And once this bit of news is broken in a brusque one- or two-sentence treatise—spare words are the enemy of anyone trying to hit the “post” button first—that is followed almost instantly by a swarm of also-rans, some of whom were mostly aware of the news but were perhaps not quite quick enough on the draw, and most of whom are simply here to amplify the breaking story to their followers and perhaps even grab a little of the glow of the scoop for themselves.
It doesn’t necessarily seem the best way to expend our energy, but, hey, I’m as guilty as anyone of checking and rechecking and rechecking again to get the latest news. Being first on a big sports signing or trade or firing is unquestionably a dopamine rush, it can make you briefly famous, and in a time when so much in the sports media business feels uncertain and unsteady—hell, Sports Illustrated stories are being written by AI and The New York Times doesn’t even have a sports section—breaking a big story can feel like a triumph of the human spirit.
It’s no wonder then, that EVERYBODY wanted to break the Shohei Ohtani story, even for the 0.003 seconds it would have taken for everybody else to jump on it.
And it’s no wonder that as the Ohtani saga came to its Dodgers conclusion, the mania in chasing Ohtani led to some rushed conclusions and misguided assumptions and a brief but intense period when some people actually thought Ohtani was going to sign with the Toronto Blue Jays.
I’m not here to criticize anyone; I know that MLB reporter Jon Morosi, who is a super-nice guy, has thrown himself on his sword and apologized profusely for misreporting that Ohtani was on a plane to Toronto, but Jon was hardly alone in the mania and, frankly, all of this felt sort of inevitable.
The Ohtani signing is one of the biggest stories in baseball history. Ohtani is deeply devoted to his privacy and seemed willing to go to any and all extremes to make sure that his choice did not leak before he himself announced it. Reporters had been griping for days and days about Ohtani’s secrecy, even demanding that MLB do something about it.
Something had to give. I’m a little bit surprised that it was the Toronto Blue Jays that played the role of Elisha Gray, but I did feel certain that there would be one big misdirection before it was announced that Ohtani had signed with the Dodgers.
This is a thought I’ve been messing around with that I find kind of funny. Here’s what, as of right now, the 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers lineup will probably look like:
- Mookie Betts, 2b
- Freddie Freeman, 1b
- Shohei Ohtani, dh
- Will Smith, c
- Max Muncy, 3b
- Jason Heyward, rf
- Chris Taylor, lf
- James Outman, cf
- Gavin Lux, ss
I mean, you can play around with that some—Ohtani might hit second and Freeman third, I’m sure the Miguels (Vargas and Rojas) will play some role and the Dodgers might yet do some other stuff this offseason. But at this precise moment, in the wake of the Ohtani signing, that looks like the lineup.
Now, here was the Dodgers 2021 lineup at the end of the year:
- Mookie Betts, rf
- Corey Seager, ss
- Trea Turner, 2b
- Max Muncy, 1b
- Justin Turner, 3b
- Will Smith, c
- Gavin Lux/Cody Bellinger cf
- AJ Pollock, lf
- No DH then, but it could have been any number of people, including Albert Pujols.
I gotta tell you—that 2021 lineup, top to bottom, is way better. No way Jason Heyward is hitting sixth in that 2021 lineup. Pollock hit .297/.355/.536, which is certainly way better than you can expect from Chris Taylor. Bellinger was in freefall in 2021, but I mean, would you rather have him now or Outman? Muncy bashed 36 home runs in the clean-up spot in 2021; Will Smith, as good as he is, has never slugged .500 in a full season. Lux as your every-day shortstop has to be a huge question mark.
It’s just something to think about. In the aftermath of an enormous signing like Shohei’s, it’s easy to lose sight of the bigger picture. That top three of Betts, Freeman and Ohtani is obviously all-time great. But it falls off considerably after that.
A lot of people have asked me in the last couple of days: Is Ohtani worth it? I’d say the question has too many branches to be answered just one way.
Shohei Ohtani the icon is absolutely worth it. The Dodgers had star power before, sure, but it was BASEBALL star power. That is to say, Clayton Kershaw, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, they’re big baseball stars. But in the larger context of celebrity and fame, no, they’re not in Ohtani’s world of superstardom. I don’t think anyone in baseball since Derek Jeter has been in Ohtani’s world, and even Jeter did not offer the worldwide renown that Ohtani does.
I’ve heard it said that Shohei will bring the Dodgers anywhere from $20 to $40 million annually in various ways, just by being Shohei Ohtani (this, even though the Dodgers don’t have many more tickets to sell). I don’t know exactly how that stuff works, but I trust that the Dodgers have studied the finances and it adds up for them.
Shohei Ohtani the hitter is a good bet. One of the most mind-blowing things about Ohtani is the way he continues to improve. When he won his first MVP in 2021, he hit .257/.372/.592 with 46 home runs and a league-leading eight triples.
Last year, he hit .304/.412/.654 with 44 homers and eight triples in 20 fewer games.
He just got so much better in every way, he struck out a lot less, he walked more, he hit the ball harder, it is truly remarkable how hard Ohtani works on himself. He does turn 30 in July, so there might be some concern about how he ages. But I was recently talking to a scout who was saying that what he sees when watching Ohtani hit is David Ortiz, which makes a lot of sense to me. Ortiz, you might recall, aged pretty well.
Shohei Ohtani the pitcher is a wild card. Let’s be honest—we don’t even know exactly what kind of elbow surgery Ohtani underwent in September, so I don’t know how we can predict his pitching future. You would assume that the Dodgers are fully briefed on Ohtani’s health, and they gave him $700 million, so let’s guess that’s a sign that they have faith.
What we know for sure is this: Ohtani has been remarkably committed to being a pitcher as well as a hitter. He insisted upon it in Japan and then made pitching a huge part of his negotiations when coming to play in the U.S. After he needed Tommy John surgery at the end of the 2018 season, he continued to play as a DH but never for one moment doubted that he would come back as a pitcher and better than ever, which he did (he finished fourth in the Cy Young voting in 2022).
I don’t think Ohtani will pitch at all in 2024, though, honestly, who knows with this guy? He’s as driven as any athlete we’ve ever seen, and he’s playing not only for today but also for history. If offered the option to bet on Shohei Ohtani or against him, I’d always bet on him.
One of the things I’ve heard again and again is that the other big winner in the Ohtani free-agent contract is Juan Soto. His price, the thinking goes, just went way up.
I’m sure this is true. Soto’s agent is Scott Boras, and he will use any and all weapons at his disposal to get his guy the biggest deal possible. The Ohtani contract is certainly there to be used.
But, I’ll also say: Apples and oranges. I mean that a bit more literally than the expression suggests—it’s not like apples and oranges are THAT different. I mean they’re both fruits, and they’re roughly the same size, and they’re next to each other in the supermarket, and they both make delicious juice that will be available at your breakfast buffets.
But the differences are there. Of course, Soto doesn’t pitch. Ohtani has flashed more power as a hitter. Soto is almost five years younger. But the big thing that comes to mind is Soto simply doesn’t have much of a presence. I mean, he’s so young, and he’s going to his third team, and you would think the best is still to come with him.
But trying to look at it simply, Soto was probably not the most famous player on any team he’s been on. Bryce Harper was in Washington when he arrived, and then Max Scherzer certainly had a bigger Q rating (Trea Turner and Kyle Schwarber and Stephen Strasburg maybe, too). There were a bunch of stars like Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis and Blake Snell in San Diego. Now he joins Aaron Judge’s Yankees.
Does any of this detract from Soto’s greatness as a player? Of course not. But Shohei is a once-in-a-lifetime megastar whose signing changes the entire profile of a team and even MLB itself. Soto isn’t like that, because nobody else is like that. I’m sure Soto’s deal, assuming he rips pitchers apart in New York—how many homers does he hit in that ballpark?—will top $500 million, which is pretty good coin. Because he will be only 26 at the end of the season, maybe Boras will even dream up some kind of wild, 17-year contract to get the overall value up into the Shohei stratosphere.
Whatever, yes, Soto certainly had to be happy to see the Ohtani deal, even if he’s a different case.
Joe Posnanski has been named the best sportswriter in America by five different organizations, including the Sports Media Hall of Fame and the Associated Press Sports Editors. He has also won two Sports Emmy Awards. He is the No. 1 New York Times bestselling author of six books, and he co-hosts the PosCast with television writer and creator Michael Schur.
