As Jon Heyman said on MLB Network, “Ohtani is not about the money.”
He cost himself hundreds of millions of dollars in 2017 by coming to the United States two years early and basically did the same thing in 2023 by signing a heavily-deffered 10-year, $700M contract.
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The previously unreported deferrals were said to be suggested by Ohtani himself as the negotiations vaulted the figure towards $700 million, the person briefed on the terms told The Athletic.
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“So, when negotiations were getting near the level where they ended up, Shohei decided he wanted to defer almost all of his salary.”
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The question of how that desire would impact his free agency was answered by the structure of his potential contract. The Dodgers proposed multiple iterations of deals working up toward where they believed Ohtani’s would wind up: somewhere in the neighborhood of $600 million guaranteed, nearly $175 million larger than Trout’s deal with the Angels. As the total guarantee increased, the Dodgers proposed different structures that would allow them payroll flexibility, including the possibility of deferred money, like in Betts’ and Freeman’s deals.
On Thursday, Ohtani spoke of his contract through the lens of winning, happily forgoing cash now — his $40 million-plus per year in off-field revenue more than covers what he’s giving up in deferred money — so the Dodgers can build a superteam around him. It’s not just the quarter-billion dollars of net present value Ohtani gave up with the deferrals; it’s how long the Dodgers can take to pay for them. Los Angeles doesn’t need to fund deferred compensation until July 1, 2026, a point at which the organization expects to have made so much money off of Ohtani’s presence that the deal essentially pays for itself.
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The Giants were all-in. Zaidi said that the team quickly jumped to what would have been the biggest deal in the history of the sport, and in every subsequent discussion, acceded to Ohtani’s wishes.
“To show the level of commitment that we had from our ownership group, really every financial target or request that was made from their camp was met and was met pretty quickly,” Zaidi said.
