Its no secret that I love baseball. Now that Shohei Ohtani has rejected his qualifying offer, he is reputed set to receive a record free agent contract. A qualifying offer is made to free agents by their current team. A qualifying offer is the average of the top 125 contracts by annual value. This year that figure is $20,325,000. Ohtani was one of 7 who rejected their offers. The others were Cody Bellinger (who is rumored to go to the Yankees), Josh Hader, Blake Snell (who may win the Cy Young in the National League), Aaron Nola (who is from New Orleans!), Sonny Gray and Matt Chapman. Gray and Chapman were surprises to me. I would have taken the money.
I really like Ohtani. He will win another American League MVP. If he pitched full time he would win the Cy Young. If he DH’ed full time he would win the Triple Crown. But doing both has resulted in his getting hurt too often. But he is worth the price of admission. We go to St Petersburg and camp for a week and go to two Rays’ games when the Angels come to visit. Ohtani will likely get a guaranteed contract in excess of $60 million a year. The question is how many years. Naturally the Yankees are listed as a possible suitor. But they should know better. They got GianCarlo Stanton in free agency from the Marlins. Stanton has been a bust mainly because of his frail health. He was awful last year batting .191 with 24 home runs. The Yankees may waive him but are on the hook for the $94 million remaining on his contract.
Currently the richest contract in the majors is Ohtani’s teammate Mike Trout. Yet with Ohtani, Trout and a former high priced free agent in Antony Rendon the Angels have never made the playoffs. That got me to wondering if these free agents are worth the money. I know you will say the Texas Rangers who paid dearly for Jacob deGrom, Corey Seager and Matt Scherzer. But deGrom was hurt all year and Scherzer came via trade late. But Corey Seager may have been worth the $325 million. He has been a consistent all star, won the World Series with the Dodgers and Rangers and was MVP in both. Nevertheless, the Rangers are a collection of no names. The same is true of the Tampa Bay Rays who have of late out performed the high priced Yankees and Red Sox in their division despite having very little fan support and one of the lowest payrolls in baseball.
All this leads me to wonder if the team with the highest payroll ever won the World Series. The answer is yes. The Yankees in 2009 and the Red Sox in 2018. I was surprised that the Dodgers were not on that list when they won the World Series in 2020. They had Mookie Betts and Clayton Kershaw but were second in payroll to the Yankees. Corey Seager was MVP was paid “only” $13.75 million. So expect Ohtani to get record bucks, be a huge attraction and win MVPs. But don’t expect his team to win the World Series.
haroldblackphd.com 