☀️ Good morning and welcome back to The Nosebleeds.

🌏️ Y’all already know what today’s newsletter is going to be about—the best athlete on planet Earth—Shohei Ohtani.

📽️ Sho time.

💸 The $700,000,000 man

10 years, $700 million.

That’s right, Shohei Ohtani has signed the largest contract in North American sports history.

And the funny thing? He’s probably worth it.

Today, we will be dissecting every aspect of the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes that transpired—from the intricacies of the actual contract, to how an entire country was deceived by an MLB Free Agency negotiation tactic.

Sit back, relax, and grab your morning coffee—we have the biggest newsletter in Nosebleed Sports history on tap.

🧐 Is a baseball player really worth that $700 million?

Back in August, we tried to determine the true value of Shohei Ohtani and figure out what his upcoming contract might look like.

Some important findings to note from that newsletter:

1. One win is worth $8M.

2. Ohtani’s value was split fairly evenly between pitcher and hitter.

3. The calculations are simply Ohtani’s value as a baseball player—the economic value he brings from tickets, merchandise, advertisements, etc., is not included.

So what does this all mean?

1. Shohei Ohtani has accumulated 26.4 Wins Above Replacement over his last three seasons (which included a 2023 season shortened by injury), for an average WAR of 8.8 per season. 8.8 WAR multiplied by $8M per win equals an average annual value of $70.4M. Nearly spot on with the $70M AAV contract Ohtani just signed.

2. Because Ohtani’s value is essentially split between pitcher and hitter, we can assume $350M of his contract is attributed to his pitching ability, and the other half to his hitting ability. When broken down like that, Ohtani’s contract is not very absurd at all. Gerrit Cole signed a 9-year, $324M contract with the New York Yankees a couple seasons ago, and Aaron Judge signed a 9-year, $360M contract last offseason. $684M over nine years for comparable players? Seems like 10-years, $700M is in the ballpark of Ohtani’s true value.

3. The crazy thing about Shohei Ohtani is that you could have gave him a 12-year, $1 Billion contract, and once you account for his value off of the baseball field, that still would probably not be an overpay. Ohtani is an international superstar, especially in his home country of Japan. I understand baseball isn’t the most popular sport in North America, but this guy is the face of Japan. Four of Ohtani’s games for the Angels last season had more viewers than the freaking Super Bowl (which had 115.1M people tune in), and a study from Katsuhiro Miyamoto, a professor at Kansai University in Japan, determined that Ohtani’s deal with the Dodgers will have a ~$440M economic impact next year.

So yes, if I had $700M to spend, I would spend every cent I have on Shohei Ohtani.

But no matter if Ohtani is worth it or not, $700M is a preposterous amount of money. Especially when you consider the following tweets:

• Over the course of his contract, Ohtani will earn $50 per second that he spends playing baseball.

• And for the next ten years including his time off the field? Ohtani will take home more than $143 per minute.

• Ohtani is set to earn more money than eight entire MLB teams in 2024.

• Just read these facts… ridiculous is an understatement.

🍁 Hoodwinked, bamboozled, led astray, run amok and flat out deceived!

“Everyday

I pray

that Shohei

becomes a Blue Jay

🙏” - me, June 30, 2023

Our prayers were so close to being answered….

The Los Angeles Dodgers were always the favorites to sign Shohei Ohtani. The Dodgers have seemingly unlimited resources when it comes to signing free agents, they play on the west coast (Ohtani’s preference because there is less of a time difference with Japan), and they are one of baseball’s marquee franchises. Essentially, Shohei Ohtani was born to be a Dodger. But for a few (wonderful) hours, the world thought Ohtani was enroute to Canada to become a Toronto Blue Jay.

Let me set the scene for y’all. It is a beautiful Friday afternoon, and your Twitter feed is filled with tweets saying “Ohtani to the Blue Jays is picking up steam… it is a real possibility.” I was feeling some type of way. Then all of a sudden, Jon Morosi made my heart skip a beat with this tweet:

Oh Jon, how provocative.

All of a sudden Twitter was filled with people tracking Ohtani’s private jet to Toronto (myself included) and I could not focus on anything other than Ohtani. So how did I calm myself down you ask? Great question! I sprinted to the liquor store and bought some Sapporo for the boys and I, just in case…

After a few more hours, the jet the world was watching arrives in Toronto, and there it is—a video of a beautiful 6’4” Japanese man entering the airport in Toronto:

But what was strange about the entire flight report was that no other insiders confirmed, nor denied, that Shohei Ohtani was on his way to Toronto. The only other report from a credentialed journalist regarding Ohtani and the Blue Jays from that afternoon was this article from a Dodgers beat writer saying Ohtani signed with the Jays.

It really seemed like Ohtani was destined to become the face of Canadian sports… until Bob Nightengale broke a country’s heart with a single tweet, which was soon confirmed by numerous other reporters.

The next day, Shohei Ohtani announced on Instagram that he was signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

💔 

While this story is largely filled with heartbreak (and what should be credential-stripping reporting from Morosi and Hoornstra), it is also a story filled with lies and deception—the Blue Jays were simply a puppet getting strung around by Ohtani’s agency, CAA, to get Ohtani as much money as possible from the Dodgers.

Do you remember that plane the whole world was watching? Do you know who was actually on the plane? Robert Herjavec (from Dragon’s Den and Shark Tank), who just so happens to be a CAA client…

Maybe all of that is a lie and this conspiracy is not true at all, but hey, if “legitimate” credentialed reporters can spread some bullshit information, why can’t I? :)

🖊️ Contract craziness

Fact #1: Shohei Ohtani signed a 10-year, $700M contract.

Fact #2: Shohei Ohtani will make $2M in salary per season for the duration of the contract.

That’s right, in order to lessen the Dodgers’ luxury tax burden and give the team flexibility to continue to invest in free agents, Ohtani elected to have $68M of his annual salary deferred until his contract expires.

There are a few main reasons why Ohtani elected to do this:

1. Obviously, it allows the Dodgers to continue to build a strong team around the likes of Ohtani, Betts, and Freeman.

2. Ohtani is an international superstar, and is expected to earn $50M in endorsements—he’ll be just fine with only a $2M salary from the Dodgers.

3. The third reason, and likely the most significant, is taxes. Ohtani was set to lose more than half of his $70M annual salary to the California government, but if Ohtani is a resident in a different state or country after the contract expires, the $68M he is set to earn every year will be taxed based on his residency—not by California.

So kids, the take home lesson here is…

If you want commit to tax evasion, you better learn how to throw a nasty sweeper and hit nukes.

Money, deception, heartbreak… the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes had it all.

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