What could you do with 700 million dollars? A lot. Shohei Ohtani, one of the greatest major league baseball players of all time, is now asking himself, “What will I do with $700,000,000?”

Shohei Ohtani (show-hey oh-tan-ee) is a 29-year-old baseball player from Oshu, Japan, and on December 9th, 2023, he signed the largest sports contract in history. At the beginning of December, Shohei was looking at multiple offers, including the Toronto Blue Jays, but it was clear to many that he was destined for the Los Angels Dodgers. Ohtani’s contract is for 700 million dollars over the course of ten years with the Dodgers, topping the second highest baseball contract, Mike Trout’s, by $273.5 million. With so much money involved, there are definitely some complications as well – Ohtani will not simply be getting $70 million every year for the next ten years. Before we get into the deferrals involved with the massive contract, let’s better understand why Shohei has signed a deal bigger than that of Lionel Messi.

Ohtani, nicknamed Shotime, was a pitcher, designated hitter, and occasionally an outfielder for the Los Angeles Angels from December 2017 to December 2023. While it is unusual for a starting pitcher to be one of the team’s top hitters as well, Ohtani is one of the rare double threats. In his entire MLB career so far, Shotime has hit 53 home runs and has had 608 strikeouts. His hitting alone would be enough to make him one of the best baseball players today, but his pitching is even better. Ohtani’s splitter is called the most unhittable pitch in baseball, as he strikes out roughly 90% of batters that are up against it (as of 2022). Shohei has won a Rookie of the Year award, many Player of the Year awards, two Silver Slugger awards, and in 2023, he

won World Baseball Classic Most Valuable Player award. With all of these accomplishments, the amount of money his contract is worth might make more sense.

Ohtani’s amazing skill with both pitching and hitting is a very important thing for him next season. In August of 2023, the Angels announced that Shohei would be removed from the pitching mound for the rest of the season due to a torn UCL in his right elbow. He was allowed to continue batting until September 2023 when it was revealed that he would have to undergo Tommy John surgery. Still recovering, Shotime may stand as the Dodger’s designated hitter for the 2024 season. Due to his amazing ability in both pitching and hitting, he will still serve as a valuable player even off the mound.

Now that we’ve established why there’s so much craze around Ohtani, what’s up with the complexity of his contract? Put simply, while, by the end of ten years, he will have made $700 million, his annual pay will not be the $70 million that many assumed. Instead, he will gain $2 million in annual salary and the remaining $680 million will be paid at the end of his contract. This may sound like a scam, but the deferral was actually Ohtani’s idea. He makes roughly $45 million a year in brand endorsements and advertisements with brands in both the US and Japan, so he can certainly afford it. His agent reported that he “wanted to give the Dodgers more freedom to spend on the team around him.” While his deferrals do allow the Dodgers to spend more on other players, it also allows them to avoid paying taxes because of the CBT threshold which serves as a salary cap and penalizes teams that go over it.

That’s pretty much the wrap! To recap: Shohei Ohtani is one of the, if not the, best players in baseball. While he isn’t earning his 700 million dollars as simply as one might think, the Dodgers will end up paying a handsome sum of money in exchange for the pitching and hitting superstar. His contract, signed in December 2023, holds the record for largest sports

contract ever signed, beating out people like John Rahm, Lionel Messi, and Ohtani’s former team member, Mike Trout. With the massive deferrals put in place, Ohtani will be earning only $2 million a year from the Dodgers, but somehow, I think he’ll live. After all, he’ll have ten years to consider what he will do with that remaining $680 million.

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