I think that it'll be interesting to see how much deferred money Ohtani agreed to. I'm guessing that discounting future cash flows will bring the true value of the $700 M to the $550 M range. It goes to show that he's more interested in winning than anything else.
What I'm looking forward to is teams not being able to pitch around Ohtani, which is something that he's never really had. Even in his 3 year MVP level stretch (let's be honest, his 34 homer and 15 wins at a 2.33 ERA campaign was likely his best year), with the exception of Mike Trout, who else was consistent ?
Definitely not Rendon, who should be ran out of Baseball and is one of the worst signings in sports history. Definitely not a whole bunch of other literally who tier players.
I think that we'll see the full potential of Ohtani as a Batter, regardless of whether or not he's pitching.
The other element is that they'll be able to rest him every now and then. I remember last season, where there was a stretch of 17 games in 16 days or some shit where he refused to sit because the Angels had a shot at the postseason. That's what exacerbated his injuries to begin with.
With that rest, the general injury risk will be reduced and that's another positive.
Again, even in the worst case scenario where he never pitches again and has to be a 1st Baseman or something, Ohtani's revenue generation for Baseball is likely higher than anyone in recent history. The advertising dollars that he generates is on a different stratosphere.
He's also committed to being the best Baseball player that he can be. He's not interested in anything else and that's a credit to the guy. Conditioning, training, learning, watching film...the level of dedication that he has to those activities is only rivaled by DSP's penchant for spending money on idiotic wrestling game apps.
Bottom line is that if you're going to pay $700 over 10 years to 1 guy in this sport, Shohei Ohtani is your guy.
