One of the subjects that will follow us throughout the next campaign is certainly the Shohei Ohtani dossier. Will it be traded? What contract will he sign at the end of the 2023 season?
As for the second question, some baseball executives and agents believe Ohtani will put his signature to the bottom of a pact worth more than $500 million. No North American professional athlete has yet reached this mark.
With the latest spending by MLB organizations, it’s not hard to believe the Nippon could fetch so much money, considering the feat he’s accomplished on the ballpark.
The question that remains is how long will he be able to keep up the pace as a positional player AND as a starting pitcher, at an elite level.
If he only plays one or the other of these positions, he is certainly worth more than 30 million dollars annually. Now, if he manages to fill both boxes for multiple seasons, is he worth more than $40, 50, or $60 million? This is the game to which the interested teams will have to lend themselves.
It will be possible and probably necessary to include performance bonuses in Ohtani’s next contract, since it will be almost impossible to know the future.
It remains to be seen who will be dancing. The Los Angeles Dodgers, San Francisco Giants and New York Mets will certainly participate. Not to mention the Los Angeles Angles, especially if they are sold by the end of 2023 and the new owner is Japanese and/or very rich and spendthrift.
Or will the Boston Red Sox emerge from their constant hibernation and surprise the baseball planet?
We already knew that an amount of $500 million was a possibility. But now it seems almost unavoidable.
