In case you were ignoring baseball in the offseason still angry about the Astros inability to win at Minute Maid Park, here’s an update. Angels MVP Shohei Ohtani signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers over the weekend for a record 10 years, $700 million. Yup, nearly three-quarters of a billion dollars for the Japanese phenom. We can debate all day long over whether this is good for baseball (it probably isn’t), but what’s more important is how this will impact the Astros.
While the Dodgers were signing Ohtani and the Yankees were trading for Juan Soto, the Astros landed a backup catcher and on reliever. Splash?
There are positives, negatives and unknowns about the Ohtani deal when it comes to the Astros. Let’s look at them.
On the good side...
Ohtani, in his negotiations with every team including the Dodgers, offered to defer nearly all of his salary until the end of the contract. He will be paid $2 million per season over 10 years and the remaining $680 million at the end with no interest. That is huge for any team that doesn’t want to be handicapped by one player’s crazy contract (if the main concern is the competitive tax MLB levies when teams spend too much). The deferred money leaves open an argument that teams could now back-load contracts to save them in both salary and potential luxury tax penalties. Think of Alex Bregman or Kyle Tucker taking slightly less per year but with a huge payout down the road. That might coax Jim Crane into thinking a longer deal could be worth it.
Additionally, Ohtani moves out of the Astros division, in fact out of the entire American League. Nothing wrong with that.
On the bad side…
This is still a VERY long deal worth a boatload of money, and the deferment only really works because Ohtani makes gobs of money in endorsements. It’s hard to imagine Bregman or Tucker saying, “No problem on that annual salary, we’ve got that H-E-B money rolling in.” And it doesn’t solve the problem of the number of years, something Astros still don’t want, even if the sting of the salary isn’t quite as significant. Plus, Crane is a wealthy guy, but is he $700 million paid over 20 years wealthy? Will he even be around to see the deal done?
Plus, this starts to set an even bigger free agent market than we’ve seen before. It was one thing for guys like Corey Seager and Mike Trout and others to get $300-$400 million. It’s quite another when one guy is getting nearly twice that. Sure, he’s super unique, but agents aren’t going to let teams off the hook because Ohtani is a unicorn. If anything, they will use his mega salary to justify asking for more money and resetting the market upwards.
Still unknown…
Is this a one-off? We don’t really know because Ohtani is so unique. Granted, he was signed with the full knowledge that he won’t pitch next year even if he does intend to pitch in 2025, but just the possibility of a legit two-way player with his incredible popularity in Japan made him more unique than any one in baseball. It’s hard to imagine anyone asking for close to this amount in the next round of big time free agent negotiations.
Additionally, we have never seen someone who literally doesn’t need the salary. He makes roughly $50 million in endorsements annually thanks to his massive fame in his home country, never mind his rising star here in America. There isn’t another MLB player that can come close to matching that.
Bottom line…
The Astros are likely to remain in the same boat with their impending free agents. Ohtani’s deal, like Ohtani himself, is completely unique in the history of baseball. It is unlikely to change much of the calculus on deals for Bregman, Tucker, Framber Valdez, Jose Altuve or others at this point.
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2023.
