Quote:
Originally Posted by Senator Clay Davis
The thing about Ohtani is you pretty much cannot overpay him because of how much you'll get back in the marketing aspects. Even though he will obviously not be as great as he's been forever, he's still the biggest star in the sport, by far, and he has a market of 125 million people basically to himself.
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A big chunk of the extra ticket sales are distributed, it doesn't all go to the home team. And I doubt the extra marketing is worth more than a few million per year.
The biggest risk is the pitching. Take the Jays - they have both Ryu (starting pitcher) and Belt (DH) coming off contract this year, for a combined total of just under $30 MM.
Ohtani is a better pitcher than Ryu and a better hitter than Belt, so you could reasonably pay more than that $30 MM. Say that upgrade is worth $7.5 MM each way and now you're at $45 MM, plus something for extra tickets/endorsements and you can see where the $50MM/year baseline was coming from, and $60 MM seems possible.
But if he's just a hitter maybe you're looking at Mookie Betts type money and he's only worth $30 MM. So it's a big risk to sign him long term assuming he plays both ways.
I think if he wants the $60MM/year some of the later years are going to need to be team options to keep the risk down (lower guaranteed money) or if he wants the security of perpetual intergenerational wealth maybe he can get $300-400 MM over 9-10 years, figuring on many of those being DH only.