Shohei Ohtani tearing his right UCL again is bad news for baseball fans, whether it’s a full tear requiring another Tommy John surgery or a partial one that still keeps him off the mound for a lengthy period. We’re deprived of more of the greatest show in MLB, maybe in the game’s history, really, as we have never seen another player like him and I highly doubt we’ll see another in my lifetime. But I don’t think this is going to affect his free agency much if at all, because so much of his value to his team is off the field.
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The story in baseball circles is that Ohtani is worth north of $70 million a year to the Angels before he throws a pitch or swings a bat, because of all of the additional revenue they get from corporate sponsorships, stadium signage, and merchandise related to Ohtani sold at Angel Stadium. Whatever the real number is — and it would vary by team, as well — it’s going to be enough to make Ohtani the highest-paid player in MLB history. If he’s hitting every day, and making 25-30 starts, he might be worth $100 million a year by himself between the value of his production on the field and the value he provides off the field.
He should be paid that number. He won’t, because there is no way on earth any team is going to more than double the existing record for a player’s single-year salary. MLB teams are owned by sheep that live in fear of the MLB commissioner’s shears. We’ve got an owner in Baltimore lying through his teeth about how just giving one young player on the roster a nine-figure extension would put the team permanently underwater. Do you really think some other owner will offer Ohtani half a billion dollars or more in an environment where his compatriots are pleading penury so they can shove their hands in the public purse again?
Because that’s the environment in which MLB players and their agents operate, with 30 owners who ostensibly act as competitors but just as often act as a Supreme Court-sanctioned cartel. Ohtani was never going to be paid his actual worth — what economists call the marginal revenue product of his labor, or how much more cash his team makes from having him on the roster and playing. Before the UCL tear, he was going to set the record for the highest salary, whether measured by a single year or the AAV (average annual value) of his contract, and that will still happen. His worth is just so far above anything he was likely to be paid that I don’t think losing him as a pitcher for a year will impact the deal at all. Whoever signs him is getting an incredible discount, at least for the first several years of the deal, and I don’t see any way around this. Ohtani will get the shaft — again, because baseball’s anti-player rules on international free agency shafted him when he first came over in 2018, too.
There’s one way Ohtani and his agents could try to increase his payout and thus the share of the surplus that would otherwise go to his team (or teams) — going for short-term deals, trying to set the salary record one time and top it the next. It’s a bet on Ohtani remaining one of the best players in the world, a bet I’d take, and a bet that the top end of player salaries will continue the inexorable rise it’s seen over the last half-century. They could also negotiate an “opt-out,” otherwise known as a player option (I have no idea why the euphemism “opt-out” has caught on), to allow Ohtani to return to free agency after a few years — perhaps rehabbing his elbow on one team’s dime so he can go back to the market in better shape. He’d still be underpaid, but it would allow him to recapture more of the revenue he generates through his play and through his existence.
None of this can compensate MLB fans for losing Ohtani for any period of time, of course. He’s MLB’s most marketable player right now, with the No. 2 selling jersey this year according to the league (behind Ronald Acuña Jr., even though he doesn’t have a very good slider). He’s the player your friends who don’t really follow baseball know about. I visited my in-laws recently at their retirement community and a friend of theirs cornered me to ask where Ohtani might be headed. Some of our friends are traveling to Philly from Virginia next week just to see Ohtani play. He’s a one-man attraction in a team sport. Barry Bonds did this briefly during his home run record chase in 2001, but Ohtani does this just by being Ohtani. He should be in every MLB commercial. He should be on a Wheaties box. He should be shilling for Subway with all of those athletes from what seems like every sport but baseball. Losing him, or half of him, is a loss for all of us who love the sport and the people who play it. I still think he gets paid, though.
(Top photo of Ohtani: Mark J. Terrill / Associated Press)
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