Can the Yankees star match the biggest outlier contract in sports?
At some point in the next month or two, Juan Soto is going to sign a piece of paper and become an obscenely rich man. It’s unclear, however, if that new wealth will be record-breaking.
Shohei Ohtani currently has the largest contract in sports history with the 10-year, $700 million contract he signed with the Los Angeles Dodgers a year ago. That deal didn’t just break Mike Trout’s record for baseball money, it surpassed it by nine figures. An entire Nolan Arenado contract could fit in the distance between the money in Ohtani’s deal and Trout’s $426 million.
Soto was long earmarked to land the next mega-deal when the star outfielder hit free agency this offseason, but Ohtani’s deal now looms over the negotiations. Will Soto be able to come close to the deal that made the baseball world gasp, or will Ohtani’s deal remain an outlier?
Here’s what you should know about what Soto has going for him, and why his case is different than Ohtani’s. Both players are elite hitters, and that is pretty much where the similarities end.
It might be a bit of a surprise considering Soto and Ohtani both made their MLB debuts in 2018, but the 26-year-old Soto is more than three years younger than Ohtani was at the time of his own free agency. Ohtani found stardom in Japan, then came over to MLB at the age of 23, while Soto shot up through the Washington Nationals’ minor league system as a teenager.
That three-year gap is significant, because those are three more years of prime a Soto bidder will be getting if they land him.
Let’s perform an exercise. We won’t pretend like Soto can match Ohtani’s $70 million average annual value (and we’ll get into why that number is misleading later). Instead, let’s look at the second-largest average annual value a player has received: Aaron Judge’s $40 million ($360 million over nine years). It’s been a couple years since Judge signed that deal, so let’s add $5 million and say Soto could receive $45 million per year. That’s an expansive hand wave, but we’re in a rush here.
Now let’s consider Judge is signed through his age-39 season. We could also look at Soto’s similarity score on Baseball Reference and see his most similar batter through his age-25 season, who has already played a full career, is Hall of Famer Frank Robinson. By OPS+, Robinson remained an above-average hitter until he retired at age 40.
We are doing some back-of-the-napkin math for a very complicated process, but paying Soto $45 million until his age-40 season gives you a 15-year, $675 million contract. Throw in another year, and he’s past Ohtani.
That would be the longest contract in MLB history, surpassing Fernando Tatis Jr.’s 14-year, $340 million deal, but that’s what becomes more possible when you hit free agency at Soto’s age.
The problem with comparisons to Ohtani’s contract is the $700 million is something of a lie.
Yes, when Ohtani’s paychecks from this contract are all added up, they will total $700 million. However, as most fans know, Ohtani isn’t getting that $700 million the normal way. He famously deferred $680 million of that money until after the contract is up.
Because of inflation, that means Ohtani won’t be getting $700 million in value as we currently understand it. MLB treats the deal like a 10-year, $460 million contract, which sounds positively reasonable when compared to Trout’s previous record.
Here’s the the thing, though: Ohtani wanted those deferrals. He brought it to the table with the Dodgers, who eagerly accepted, because every business in the world would gladly defer the wages of its highest-earning employee by a decade if they were allowed to.
Now let’s remember Soto retains the services of Scott Boras, the guy you hire when you want the number on your contract to be as large as possible. Odds are Soto and Boras are not interested in replicating Ohtani’s generosity, and that means teams aren’t going to get the bargain Ohtani gave the Dodgers.
Forget who did and didn’t make the World Series, the biggest winner of the trade that sent Soto from the San Diego Padres to the New York Yankees might have been Soto.
By joining the Yankees a year before his free agency, he became something the Yankees could lose. Much was made about how the Yankees had a year to sell Soto on what he could accomplish in the Bronx, but the opposite is true too. Soto helped slug the Yankees to the World Series in his first year in pinstripes, and now the team is facing the possibility of having to get there again without him.
Fans wouldn’t like that, especially considering who else is in the running. The three other teams who have meetings with Soto this week are two of the Yankees’ division rivals, the Boston Red Sox and Toronto Blue Jays, and their crosstown rival, the New York Mets.
The Mets are the most intriguing option there, because a) they have Steve Cohen, the richest owner in baseball and b) Cohen has made very clear he doesn’t care about his team being profitable if it wins.
The baseball world knew for years that if the Yankees really wanted a free agent, they were getting that free agent. The Mets have a chance to loudly declare that is no longer true. The best possible outcome for Soto’s bank account is for emotions to come into play while Cohen and the Steinbrenner family are making bids, and that seems to be where the situation is trending.
Signing Juan Soto will get you a great baseball player. Signing Shohei Ohtani got the Dodgers an international icon, as well as a great baseball player.
Maybe there’s a more delicate way of saying this, but Ohtani’s fame is different than Soto’s. Soto could be the second coming of Ted Williams, but Ohtani is the national hero of the third-wealthiest country in the world. Every single company in Japan would love to be associated with Ohtani, and that’s why the Dodgers’ business side reportedly didn’t bat an eye when they were told of a potential $700 million expense.
Through sponsorships and advertisements, the Dodgers have already made tens of millions of dollars by employing Ohtani (or even $120 million, if you believe A.J. Pierzynski). That’s money Ohtani brings in before he swings a bat, to say nothing of the financial boost the Dodgers got from winning the World Series.
Will Juan Soto make Shohei Ohtani money? (AP Photo/Godofredo Vásquez)
Soto doesn’t come with that built-in revenue stream. He will certainly help your team win and attract fans, but it’s hard to overstate just how big the gap in international fame there is between Ohtani and the rest of the world’s baseball players.
The easiest way for a contract to go south is for that player to become injury prone. It’s more common with pitchers, but we’ve also seen it with the likes of Ken Griffey Jr. and Mark Teixeira.
If Soto’s career up to now is any indication, teams probably don’t have much to worry about in that regard. Since making his first Opening Day roster in 2019, Soto hasn’t missed more than 13 games in a single season. He’s also a guy who doesn’t rely on tools that could degrade with age. His best tool, plate discipline, is known to age well.
Meanwhile, the Dodgers are hoping that Ohtani’s second UCL surgery goes well, otherwise they lose what made him the greatest two-way player the game has ever seen. But on the other hand …
If you’re going to bet on a guy to be great into his late 30s, it stands to reason you want to bet on the guy who does more things well than any other player in baseball. That guy is Ohtani.
Even if Ohtani is no longer the pitcher he once was, the Dodgers reportedly wanted him more for his bat anyway. Then he went ahead and became of the best baserunners in baseball, posting the first 50-50 season in MLB history.
And let’s not forget, Ohtani occasionally played in the outfield in Japan. With his speed and arm strength, it is quite conceivable he could become a good outfielder again if pitching is no longer an option. He wouldn’t be the first Dodger superstar to make a position change for the good of the team.
We don’t know what Ohtani’s game will look like when he’s 39, but it will probably still be valuable. Meanwhile, Soto’s value is focused entirely on his bat. He isn’t a good baserunner and he isn’t a good fielder.
The contract number that Soto ends up posting will be significant for the rest of MLB. It’s hard not to see Ohtani’s contract as the ceiling of all possible deals for the foreseeable future, much like Alex Rodriguez once did with his then-Earth-shattering $252 million pact with the Texas Rangers in 2001, but Soto can beat back that narrative this winter.
At the very least, Soto appears poised to top Ohtani when it comes to actual contract value, but that could be due to Ohtani’s choices as much as Soto’s value.
