Forget the Babe Ruth comparisons; Ruth never did what Shohei Ohtani has done for the past two-plus seasons in Major League Baseball. Ohtani has excelled as both a pitcher and hitter, making him the most intriguing pending free agent in baseball history.
The designated hitter didn’t exist a century ago when Ruth was active. During two of his six total seasons with the Boston Red Sox—in 1918 and 1919—he started as a pitcher and played some outfield during his off days from the mound. After he was traded to New York in 1920, the Yankees all but stopped using him as a pitcher.
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Ruth made one start wearing pinstripes in 1920, and only four more pitching appearances—three starts—during the rest of his career. He finished 94-46 with a 2.28 ERA in 163 games pitched, with 158 of them in Boston. We’ll never know what would have happened if the Yanks had used Ruth as a true two-way player.
With Ohtani, we know. The Los Angeles Angels have utilized Ohtani as both a pitcher and a hitter, and he’s done things no other player has ever accomplished.
Heading into Tuesday’s All-Star Game, Ohtani is leading the league with 32 home runs hit and is tied for fourth with 132 batters struck out. This is unprecedented.
For the third year in a row, Ohtani made the All-Star team as both a pitcher and a hitter. This is also unprecedented. He won’t pitch during the festivities in T-Mobile Park because of a blister on the middle finger of his right hand, but he will start for the American League as the DH.
Speculation is running wild about how much money will be thrown at Ohtani when he becomes the most heralded free agent in history at the end of the World Series.
“You know what somebody said on the plane the other day? It might be the first B word,” said New York Mets manager Buck Showalter, whose team, with its megabucks owner Steve Cohen, will almost certainly be among the bidders.
“We are constantly monitoring the free agent market,” Tony Clark, the executive director of the MLB Players Association, said during an interview this week in Seattle. “But we’ll have a close eye on Ohtani, who is unlike anything we’ve ever seen.”
Putting Showalter’s billion-dollar contract prediction aside, the most common numbers tossed around for Ohtani are 10 years, $600 million—or $60 million a season. That would be by far the highest average salary ever in MLB.
In comparison, the Yankees just signed Aaron Judge to a nine-year, $360 million contract worth $40 million a year. The Mets in recent years signed pitchers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander to much shorter term deals worth $43.3 million a year, right now the highest AV in baseball history.
But Judge doesn’t pitch and with DH rules now universal, Scherzer and Verlander no longer hit.
“It depends largely on what [Ohtani’s] looking for,” Verlander said in an interview this past week in Phoenix. “If he wants to go the traditional route and maximize a single payday for a large chunk and a 10-year deal, maybe 50-plus a year, even 60. But if he says he’s a freak, which he is, and he wants to keep proving what he’s doing on both sides of the ball, maybe a shorter-term deal for 70, 80. How high is the number?”
That’s only one of the big questions. The other is the universe of teams willing to spend that kind of money. The short list includes the Mets, New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Seattle Mariners and even the San Diego Padres, despite recently losing the backend of their 20-year, $1.2 billion regional network cable deal.
The consensus is that Angels owner Arte Moreno isn’t going to spend $60 million a year to retain Ohtani but is not inclined to trade him by the Aug. 1 deadline, with the Angels still viable in the American League Wild Card race.
One would think owners might consider the money Ohtani could generate if he’s signed to that kind of contract.
“I would assume they do. Most of them are businessmen,” Verlander said. “The revenue dollars Ohtani brings in from fans in the seats to the marketing to the viewership in Japan, franchise value, it all matters. I mean, come on. Even the teams that are trying to tank are worth over a billion dollars.”
However, several baseball executives with knowledge of the process say owners don’t make those kinds of assessments when investing in a high-priced player. The overall consideration is short-term: Will he help us win?
One such executive said no club can offset $60 million a season in salary with $60 million in revenue, so don’t even consider it.
The Yankees, for instance, made an emotional decision to re-sign Judge and named him captain after a season in which he broke Roger Maris’ AL single-season home run record by hitting 62. There was no such business analysis.
Cohen said recently he’s already bleeding money after amassing the richest payroll in MLB history of $344.2 million only to watch his team flounder in the division and Wild Card races.
“I certainly have the wherewithal to do it,” Cohen, a hedge fund owner who’s worth more than $15 billion, said. “It’s just a question of how long.”
Both the Yankees and Mets will certainly be involved in the Ohtani sweepstakes.
The Angels have had the biggest bargain ever on Ohtani’s first five seasons, paying him $42.3 million, the bulk of that in a $2.3 million signing bonus in 2018 and $30 million for this season. But what kind of impact has Ohtani had on the attendance at 40,050-seat Angel Stadium? Not much.
In 2017, the season before Ohtani came over from Japan, the Angels averaged 37,279 fans a home game. In 2018, Ohtani’s first season, 37,321. This season this year, 32,797. With a roster that includes Ohtani and the now often-injured Mike Trout, the Angels have not played a playoff game. So much for the Ohtani factor.
The Angels suffered through the worst of Ohtani, who came from Japan with a first-degree tear in the ulnar ligament of the right elbow, which quickly graduated to a second-degree tear and led to Tommy John surgery after the 2018 season. He didn’t pitch at all in 2019 and made only two starts during the 2020 pandemic-shortened season before being shut down. He had left knee surgery at the end of the 2019 season to fix a congenital problem. After all that, his current magical run began.
Any team signing Ohtani must realize he’s just one pitch away from another injury. But that’s the chances teams always seem to take, as the Yankees did with Judge, who’s had two stints on the injured list already this season with hip and toe injuries and has already missed 42 of his club’s first 91 games. His return has no timetable right now.
Finally, the teams that could most use the bump in attendance, ballpark revenues, marketing and viewership from signing Ohtani won’t be involved in the sweepstakes. The teams that are already maxed out in all of those areas will be bidding up the numbers.
“That’s a shame,” Verlander said. “They all should be involved. He’s a generational talent. We haven’t seen anything like him since Babe Ruth. He might be the best player to ever play the game.”
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