by Paul Teetor
It will be Sho Time at Dodgers Stadium next season – and for the next 10 years.
That was the bottom line after the stunning announcement Saturday afternoon that megastar Shohei Ohtani had signed a 10-year, $700 million contract with the Dodgers.
The deal capped off a crazy, anxious 12 months for Dodger fans. They have been hoping for this move ever since it became clear that the Angels weren’t going to be able to re-sign the biggest star in the baseball world for a simple reason: they stink, and they showed no signs of ever getting better, at least not in the near-term future.
Everything had to go just right for Ohtani to become a Dodger, and in the end everything did. As Joe Willie Shakespeare once said, all’s well that ends well. But there were plenty of twists and turns on the road to getting the Japanese superstar hitter/pitcher, the 21st century Babe Ruth, into a blue crew uniform.
First, Dodger fans had to hope the Angels wouldn’t face reality, acknowledge that they had no hope of re-signing the two-time American League MVP, and deal him during the past season for a huge haul of players and draft picks. That would have been the smart, strategic move. Salvage what you can from a house fire and move on.
The danger there: the team that traded for him would have the rest of the season to woo him and convince him to stay long-term. Or if it was the Dodgers, they would have to give up all their top prospects. That hurdle was avoided when the trade deadline came and went. Angels owner Arte Moreno, as usual, made the wrong move and hoped against hope that Ohtani would stay in Orange County.
The next step was Ohtani becoming a free agent five days after the World Series ended.
But then nothing happened, at least not publicly, for close to three weeks. Major League Baseball insiders expected the secret, silent bidding war to end around the time of the MLB winter meetings, which started last Sunday in Nashville, Tennessee.
Then last week Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts made a terrible mistake: he told the truth.
Yes, he said in answer to a direct question, he and other Dodger execs had met with Ohtani and his representatives.
That answer was a no-brainer – what a shock, Roberts and Dodgers brass met with the guy they were trying desperately to sign, a guy Roberts described as the team’s top priority — but in the absence of any substantive Ohtani news it exploded like a bombshell. The spin was that since Ohtani is intensely private and publicity shy, any leak from a team about the negotiations would harm their chances of signing him.
But this wasn’t a leak because it was an on the record question and answer. As Roberts said later, he couldn’t lie when asked a direct question. That’s simply not his style, and it is one reason among many that Dodgers fans love him. Too bad more managers and top execs don’t follow his lead.
President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman refused to provide any details at all about the meeting, and he and other Dodger execs made it clear that Roberts had spoken out of school. When they most needed to step up to protect their manager, they weaseled out.
There was apparent fallout from the Roberts gaffe: After narrowing the list of finalists down to the Chicago Cubs, the Toronto Blue Jays and the Dodgers, it was reported Thursday night from “sources close to the negotiations” that Ohtani had decided to sign with the Blue Jays.
It was a stunner: he was going to leave sunny SoCal for the winter wonderland of Canada.
The Daily Mail even ran a page one story explaining Ohtani’s reasoning for the shocking decision: he couldn’t handle the press scrutiny that would be on him every minute of every day in LA, and he felt that Toronto was more of a sophisticated, cosmopolitan city than the glitz and glamour, bright lights big city vibe of LA.
Another reporter filed a story saying that Ohtani was flying to Toronto Thursday night to sign a contract, and would announce the news Friday afternoon. To his credit, he retracted the story when it became clear that the plane he was referring to did in fact have a celebrity passenger of sorts, but it was Canadian businessman Robert Herjavec of Shark tank fame and not Ohtani.
But for almost all of two days – Friday and most of Saturday – the baseball world assumed he was going to Toronto and Dodger fans were in mourning. Their city had been snubbed by the superstar from just down the 405.
Waaahhhh! We deserve to have Ohtani here. We’re entitled.
Sure, we’ve been in the playoffs eleven years in a row, but all we have to show for it is one measly World Series title, and that was won in the Covid season of 2020 when no one was paying attention or going to ball games.
That hissy fit lasted until Saturday afternoon, when Ohtani took to his Instagram story and apologized for taking so long to make his decision.
Then he spoke directly to Dodger fans.
“I pledge,” he wrote, “to always do what’s best for the team and always continue to give it my all to be the best version of myself. Until the last day of my playing career, I want to continue to strive forward not only for the Dodgers but for the baseball world.”
That immediately got true Dodger fans thinking about a lineup that has Ohtani batting right behind Mookie Betts, who slugged a career-best 39 home runs a year ago and finished second in the National League MVP voting, and Freddie Freeman, the third-place MVP finisher this past season and one of the game’s most reliable players.
Together, those three hit a combined 144 home runs and stole 57 bases last season.
As for pitching, Ohtani will not be able to pitch next season while he recovers from elbow surgery. So the Dodgers still have some more work to do in signing a few starting pitchers.
Ohtani’s record-setting contract contains significant cash deferrals, which will give the club flexibility to add other key pieces and reduce the competitive tax balance penalty. It was his way of saying I like the cash but I love winning even more.
Now that there will be no financial restraints, the Dodgers have extra pressure on them to unlock the right combination to make their investment in Ohtani work – something the Angels never were able to do.
His legacy in Anaheim is historic: Beyond the two unanimous MVPs, he had a three-year stretch in which he hit 124 homers while also striking out 542 batters. No one else has ever done that, not even Babe Ruth.
The $700 million total value of his contract is more than one-third of the price Guggenheim Partners paid for the franchise ($2 billion) in 2012 and the annual average value ($70 million) is more than the total payrolls of the Baltimore Orioles ($60.9 million) and Oakland A’s ($56.9 million) last season.
It says here that this is a win-win for everybody except the Angels: Ohtani gets a team that can give him a chance to win the World Series every year, the Dodgers get a player who can get them over the playoff hump that has stopped them so many times, and Major League Baseball gets its biggest star in the second biggest media market.
Oh, and one final note: I’d be a rich man – maybe richer than Ohtani — if my lottery luck was as good as my Ohtani-to-the-Dodgers prediction in last week’s All Ball column.
Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com. Follow: @paulteetor. ER
