Shohei Ohtani won’t be leaving Southern California. Though he’ll be able to buy a much bigger house, if he so chooses. Or Catalina Island.
Ohtani, the generational two-way player from Japan who won two of the past three American League Most Valuable Player awards with the Los Angeles Angels, plans to sign a historic 10-year, $700 million contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, his agent Nez Balelo confirms to TIME (ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported the terms of the deal). It’s the largest contract, measured by total value, in the history of professional sports. Ohtani announced his intentions on Instagram on Saturday. “To all the fans and everyone involved in the baseball world, I apologize for taking so long to come to a decision,” he wrote. An apology was not needed. “I have decided to choose the Dodgers as my next team.”
: he was 29 years old. Judge, at 30, signed a nine-year, $360 million deal to stay in the Bronx. Those two lucrative deals still don’t add up Ohtani’s $700 million. (Though they are a year shorter.)
Remarkably, Ohtani may have commanded even more had he not injured his throwing elbow this year and undergone surgery. He won’t pitch next season but should be back in 2025. The Dodgers are betting that he’ll regain top pitching form. In 2022, he led the American League in strikeouts per nine innings with 11.87, and his 11.39 strikeouts per nine innings would have ranked him second this season, had he not gotten injured and failed to pitch enough innings to qualify for that stat title. While he was dominating on the mound, he was continuing his incredible feats at the plate: this season he led the American League in home runs with 44 and OPS (on-base plus slugging percentage) with a 1.066 mark. It’s been said before, but worth reiterating: comparing Ohtani to Babe Ruth is a disservice to Ohtani. No one has been so good both pitching and hitting at the same time as Ohtani.
