 The Shohei Ohtani megadeal took another turn | | | Not since Kawhi Leonard left the NBA-champion Toronto Raptors for the Los Angeles Clippers in the summer of 2019 has a free agent held Canadian sports fans in the palm of his hand the way Shohei Ohtani did last week. Fuelled in part by the Japanese superstar's extreme secrecy, rumours that Ohtani would pull a reverse Kawhi and leave the L.A. Angels for Toronto reached a fever pitch on Friday.
Because social media abhors a vacuum, restless Blue Jays fans could go on their phones and find plenty of "information," real or imagined, to confirm their desire. A Dodgers blogger reported that Ohtani had picked Toronto? Must be a done deal! A private jet was on its way from Southern California to Toronto? Has to be Ohtani's! Jays pitcher Yusei Kikuchi, who went to high school with Ohtani, made a dinner reservation for 50 people? Pop the champagne!
We all ended up feeling pretty silly when the most coveted baseball free agent in decades chose the most obvious path possible. Rather than move 4,000 kilometres north, to a completely new country, to play for a team that hasn't won a playoff game in seven years, Ohtani decided on Saturday to stay in sunny Southern California and join an iconic franchise that averaged 106 wins over the last three seasons and was a favourite to win the World Series even before landing the greatest two-way player since Babe Ruth.
Ohtani's contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers, though, was anything but obvious. Expected to command north of $500 million US and maybe up to $600 million, the two-time American League MVP instead got an astounding $700 million over 10 years. That's a quarter of a billion dollars bigger than any other contract in North American sports history. And the $70M annual average suggested Ohtani would earn about $27M more than the next highest-paid players in baseball next year — and $9 million more than the entire 2023 Opening Day payroll of the AL East champion Baltimore Orioles.
Except he won't. After Ohtani officially signed his contract with the Dodgers yesterday, it was reported that he came up with the idea to defer a stunning $680M of the $700M until after the contract expires. He'll get the outstanding money in equal installments of $68 million every July 1 from 2034 to 2043. In the meantime, he'll make just $2M per year. That's less than what the Blue Jays paid backup infielder Santiago Espinal last season.
"I can say 100 per cent that… the Dodger organization and I share the same goal," Ohtani said in a news release. "To bring World Series parades to the streets of Los Angeles." Everybody says stuff like that when they sign with a new team, but Ohtani actually put his money where his mouth is. By deferring 97 per cent of his earnings — interest-free — he's giving his new team tremendous flexibility to add more good players around him over the next decade.
Keeping the Dodgers' payroll down is important to Ohtani's World Series aspirations because, while baseball does not have a salary cap, it does slap a luxury tax on teams who exceed certain payroll thresholds. And it can get quite punitive. The New York Mets, to take the most painful example, are facing an estimated tax bill of more than $110M after spending nearly $383M on players this year, per the salary-tracking website Spotrac.
Not many owners — not even the money-printing Dodgers' — can stomach that. Indeed, majority owner Mark Walter and his partners (including Magic Johnson) appear to be on the hook for only a few million bucks in luxury tax after coming in right around the threshold this year.
But, hold on, doesn't baseball have rules against the blatant luxury-tax circumvention that seems to be happening here? Well, only sort of. While baseball won't allow the Dodgers to count Ohtani's salary as $2M, it won't be $70M either. Based on the sport's formula for valuing deferred salaries, which accounts for inflation and depreciation, Ohtani's average annual salary for luxury-tax purposes will be $46M.
That's still the highest in baseball, but it's very much in line with the $43.3M that pitchers Max Scherzer and Justin Verlander will make next year as the next two highest-paid players. It also brings us closer to the truth about Ohtani's supposed $700M total contract, which in reality is more like $460M. That's still the richest contract in North American sports history, but it's only a bit bigger than Patrick Mahomes' $450M deal.
Of course, none of this works unless Ohtani was willing to take home only a fraction of what he's really worth for the next decade. He can afford this because he reportedly earns around $50M a year through endorsements — much of them flowing from his native Japan, where he's a massive celebrity. So, while the concern is that more players and teams across sports might try to skirt the rules with big deferred contracts like Ohtani's, it's more likely that this is a one-of-a-kind deal for a truly unique star.
If you want to go deeper on Ohtani's unusual contract, I recommend this piece from The Ringer's Ben Lindbergh. For the players Toronto might target after losing out on Ohtani, read this from The Canadian Press' Gregory Strong. | | |  | Shohei Ohtani deferred 97 per cent of his salary to help the Dodgers build a better team around him. (Steph Chambers/Getty Images) | | | Quickly… | | | Jon Rahm's defection to LIV Golf was a big break for two Canadian golfers. Last week, Rahm became the latest star to take a big-money offer from Saudi-financed LIV. Yesterday, the PGA Tour officially suspended the world No. 3 for "his association with a series of unauthorized tournaments" and removed him from the FedEx Cup rankings. That moved Canada's Mackenzie Hughes up one spot to No. 50 on the list, making him eligible for all seven of the Tour's $20-million US "signature" events in 2024. It also moved Canada's Carl Yuan up No. 125, giving him a full PGA Tour card and sparing him from Q-school (the tour's qualifying tournament) this week. Read more here.
Macklin Celebrini is turning heads at Canada's world juniors camp. A year after Connor Bedard's record-breaking performance at the world juniors in Halifax, another 17-year-old Canadian is trying to make the team while bolstering his case for being picked first overall in the NHL draft. Celebrini, who has 10 goals in 15 games as a freshman at Boston University, is impressing teammates and coaches with his skills and maturity at Canada's selection camp in Oakville, Ont., as he rises to the top of many draft boards. "He doesn't play his age," said goalie Mathias Rousseau. "You can tell he's a pro already… it's just how he carries himself," raved forward Conor Geekie. Read more about Celebrini here. | | | And finally… | | | John Herdman wishes he didn't go to last year's World Cup.
After helping the Canadian men's soccer team qualify for its first World Cup in 36 years, the coach lost his older sister, Nicola, to suicide a few months before the biggest tournament of his life. Around that time, a grieving Herdman was forced to deal with a walkout by his players as part of their labour dispute with Canada Soccer, throwing more cold water on his competitive fire. The team then lost all three of its matches in Qatar.
Earlier this year, Herdman left the Canadian men's team to take over Major League's Soccer's Toronto FC. He now says he regrets not stepping down before the World Cup, when he was still "really, really hurting" from his sister's death and felt like his job was done after helping Canada qualify. "I had a decision to make in June [2022] and I went against my instinct," Herdman told CBC Sports' Anastasia Bucsis on the Players Own Voice podcast. "I shouldn't have went." Read more about Herdman's revelation and listen to the episode here. | | | Share this newsletter | | or subscribe if this was
forwarded to you. | | | |
