Why Shohei Ohtani and the Dodgers are an ideal match

Jake Mintz

FOX Sports MLB Analyst

It had to be the Dodgers. It was always the Dodgers.

After months of speculation and anticipation, silence and chaos, conjecture and confusion, Shohei Ohtani, that unprecedented, singular behemoth of baseballing magic, is signing a 10-year, $700 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the largest contract in sports history. There are no opt-outs.

The news, equally obvious and shocking, was broken by the man himself, with a single Instagram post at 12:03 p.m. Pacific Time, featuring a simple Dodger blue background, with the club’s iconic interlocking LA logo atop it, accompanied by four paragraphs and a “thank you very much.”

Ohtani’s decision completely reshapes the balance of power in Major League Baseball, not just for 2024, but for the next decade. For the Dodgers, his addition is an assurance of their own relevance, both in the global baseball consciousness and in the standings.

In the end, all the drama was just noise, the chaos fugazi. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts’ controversial revelation during the winter meetings that the team had met with Ohtani will fade into history. The penultimate day of Ohtani’s free agency, a Friday of misinformation, bad journalism and airplane tracking that left Toronto Blue Jays fans with nothing more than a lifetime supply of false hope? Couldn’t be less relevant. Ohtani rose above the fray, as he always does.

His choice itself is not particularly surprising. Los Angeles has always offered the Japanese megastar the best combination of money, competitive consistency, location, relevance and lifestyle. That’s partially why Ohtani chose the Angels six years ago. If the universal DH had existed at that point, he quite possibly would have been a Dodger already.

The Dodgers are in the postseason every year, whereas Ohtani has never experienced a winning season. The Dodgers could afford to pay one person $70 million a year, while eight teams didn’t eclipse a $100 million payroll in 2023.

And yes, that dollar figure is downright eye-popping, especially because an elbow surgery will restrict Ohtani from pitching until 2025. Arm injuries are scary, and even though recoveries are more successful than ever, there is no guarantee the two-time American League MVP will ever return to his previous level. Seven-hundred million is quite a bit of scratch for a designated hitter.

But Ohtani, even in his reduced state, is so much more than that.

He is a singular presence, an icon in the flesh, a marketing department’s dream. Los Angeles’ ownership group clearly understood that Ohtani would raise the organization’s footprint and bolster its bank accounts simply by existing in Dodger blue. No other player commands such a ridiculous level of attention, eyeballs, and through it all, dollars.

That’s why the Dodgers were always the front-runner and why they were willing to meet Ohtani’s lofty demands. They had the most to gain by securing his services. Ohtani has always inferred a general disinterest towards playing in New York City. Los Angeles is the second-biggest market in the United States and has the largest Japanese population of any city outside Japan.

This front office, led by president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman, more or less punted on the offseason a winter ago (and this past summer’s trade deadline) in order to ensure it had payroll space for the upcoming Ohtani sweepstakes. The Dodgers hinged the future on a solid gamble: That they could offer Ohtani the most alluring package. They bet correctly.

And it was a bet they needed to make because, over the past decade, the Dodgers have been something of a contradiction.

The team has experienced monumental levels of success, including National League West titles in 10 of the past 11 years, five 100-win seasons and, of course, the 2020 World Series championship. Simultaneously, the organization has leveraged its immense resources to craft the game’s most impactful player development apparatus. The club has produced Cy Youngs, MVPs and future Hall of Famers and left an indelible mark on the sport over the past decade. The Dodgers are, in many terms, the premier organization in Major League Baseball, the envy of 29 other teams.

However, during that masterful run of success, the Dodgers have captured just one World Series title. In some ways, the postseason is a crapshoot, a game of roulette played on grass, and Los Angeles’ relative lack of success can be mostly chalked up to bad luck. But besides the bizarro 2020 COVID Cup season, this era of Dodger baseball can be summed up by the seemingly annual mid-October tradition of a premature playoff exit. Blissful, endless summers cut short by a landslide of what-coulda-beens.

Ohtani is exactly the shakeup they needed.

In fact, baseball hasn’t seen a transactional jolt this big since the advent of free agency. Ohtani will join a lineup that already features two MVPs in Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts. He will put butts in seats and eyeballs on televisions. He will make the Dodgers even more of an NL West favorite than they already were. He will inject a new energy and a sense of untouchable optimism into every corner of Chavez Ravine.

The Dodgers paid a whopping sum of money because, in their minds, Ohtani was worth it.

They had the most to gain — and now they will.

Jake Mintz, the louder half of @CespedesBBQ is a baseball writer for FOX Sports. He played college baseball, poorly at first, then very well, very briefly. Jake lives in New York City where he coaches Little League and rides his bike, sometimes at the same time. Follow him on Twitter at @Jake_Mintz.