Forget the Babe Ruth comparisons; Ruth never did what Shohei Ohtani did the last two seasons in Major League Baseball. Ohtani excelled as 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. In two of his six total seasons with the Boston Red Sox – in 1918 and 1919 – he started as a pitcher and played in the outfield during his days off 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 a debut wearing stripes in 1920, and only four more pitching appearances – three starts – for the rest of his career. He finished 94-46 with a 2.28 ERA in 163 games pitched, including 158 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 used Ohtani both as a pitcher and a hitter, and he did things no other player has ever done.
Heading into Tuesday’s All-Star Game, Ohtani leads the league with 32 home runs and is tied for fourth with 132 batters out. It is unprecedented.
For the third straight year, Ohtani made the All-Star team as a pitcher and hitter. It is also unprecedented. He won’t pitch during the festivities at T-Mobile Park because of a blister in the middle finger of his right hand, but he will start for the American League as a DH.
Speculation is rife about how much money Ohtani will be paid when he becomes the most-heralded free agent in history at the end of the World Series.
“Do you know what someone said on the plane the other day? It could be the first B word,” said New York Mets manager Buck Showalter, whose team, along with its megabucks owner Steve Cohen, will almost certainly be among the bidders.
“We are constantly monitoring the free agent market,” said Tony Clark, executive director of the MLB Players Association, during an interview this week in Seattle. “But we will be watching Ohtani closely, who is unlike anything we have ever seen.”
Setting aside Showalter’s billion dollar contract prediction, the most common numbers for Ohtani are 10 years, $600 million or $60 million per season. That would be by far the highest average salary ever in MLB.
By comparison, the Yankees just signed Aaron Judge to a nine-year, $360 million contract worth $40 million a year. The Mets have signed pitchers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander in recent years to shorter-term deals worth $43.3 million a year, currently the highest VA in baseball history.
But Judge doesn’t throw and with DH rules now universal, Scherzer and Verlander don’t hit anymore.
“It largely depends on what [Ohtani’s] looking,” Verlander said in an interview last week in Phoenix. “If he wants to go the traditional route and max out a single payday for a big hunk and a 10-year contract, maybe more than 50 a year, maybe even 60. But if he says he’s a freak , which he is, and he wants to continue proving what he does on both sides of the ball, maybe a shorter-term deal for 70, 80. What’s the number?
This is just one of the big questions. The other is the universe of teams willing to spend that kind of money. The shortlist includes the Mets, New York Yankees, Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Seattle Mariners and even the San Diego Padres, despite the recent loss of their contract from $1.2 billion regional network cable over 20 years.
The consensus is that Angels owner Arte Moreno won’t spend $60 million a year to retain Ohtani, but isn’t inclined to trade him before the August 1 deadline, with the Angels still viable in the game. American League Wild Card race.
You would think the owners would consider the money Ohtani could generate if he signed this type of contract.
“I suppose so. Most of them are business people,” Verlander said. “The revenue dollars that Ohtani brings in from the fans in the seats to the marketing to the audience in Japan, the value of the franchise, everything matters. I mean come on. Even the teams that try to tank are worth over a billion of dollars.
However, several baseball executives familiar with 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 that no club can offset $60m in salary per season with $60m in revenue, so don’t even think about it.
The Yankees, for example, made the emotional decision to re-sign Judge and named him captain after a season in which he broke Roger Maris’ single-season home run record by reaching 62. there was no such business analysis.
Cohen said recently he was already bleeding money after amassing the richest payroll in MLB history of $344.2 million just to see his team flounder in the division and Wild Card races. .
“I definitely have the wherewithal to do it,” said Cohen, owner of a hedge fund worth more than $15 billion. “It’s just a matter of how long.”
The Yankees and Mets will certainly be involved in the Ohtani contest.
The Angels closed the biggest deal ever over Ohtani’s first five seasons, paying him $42.3 million, most of it in signing bonuses of $2.3 million in 2018 and 30 million dollars for this season. But what kind of impact has Ohtani had on attendance at the 40,050-seat Angel Stadium? Not a lot.
In 2017, the season before Ohtani arrived from Japan, the Angels averaged 37,279 fans per home game. In 2018, Ohtani’s freshman season, 37,321. This season so far, 32,797. With a roster that includes Ohtani and the now often injured Mike Trout, the Angels haven’t played a playoff game. So much for the Ohtani factor.
The Angels took the worst of Ohtani, who came from Japan with a first-degree ulnar ligament tear in his right elbow, which quickly progressed to a second-degree tear and led to Tommy John’s surgery after the season. 2018. He didn’t pitch at all in 2019 and only made two starts in the pandemic-shortened 2020 season before being shut down. He had surgery on his left knee at the end of the 2019 season to fix a congenital problem. After all this, his current magical run began.
Any team signing Ohtani must realize that he is one step away from another injury. But those are the chances teams always seem to take, as the Yankees did with Judge, who has already had two stints on the injured list this season with hip and toe injuries and has already missed 42 of 91 first games for his club. His return has no timetable at this time.
Finally, the teams that could make the most use of the increase in attendance, approximate income, marketing and the audience of the signing of Ohtani will not be involved in the draw. Teams that are already maxed out in all of these areas will up the ante.
“It’s a shame,” Verlander said. “They should all be involved. It’s a generational talent. We haven’t seen anything like it since Babe Ruth. He might be the best player to ever play the game.”
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