Done deal: Shohei Ohtani Agreed to join Philips as wild free agency ends with $700m deal……

The most scrutinized and analyzed free agency in MLB history ended Saturday afternoon, when Shohei Ohtani’s winding offseason journey ended a few miles from where it started in a record-setting contract with the Los Angeles Dodgers. Ohtani announced the deal on Instagram as his representatives passed around its unthinkable terms: $700 million over 10 seasons. Until Saturday, Ohtani’s former Los Angeles Angels teammate Mike Trout had the richest contract in baseball history. It pays him $426.5 million over 12 seasons.

Ohtani’s deal was long expected to break records. After all, every other massive baseball contract signed in the modern era paid its recipient to pitch or hit at an elite level. Ohtani can do both.

But the $700 million the Dodgers committed to him — an even $70 million per year in average annual value — is far and above what even the most optimistic prognosticators expected. It assumes, at least in the most basic of calculations, that Ohtani will be worth about $35 million annually as a hitter and as a pitcher. For reference, only four players are earning that much as hitters: Aaron Judge, Trout, Carlos Correa and Anthony Rendon. Only six players have earned that much annually as pitchers: Max Scherzer, Justin Verlander, Jacob deGrom, Gerrit Cole and Stephen Strasburg, who is effectively retired.

In practice, the Dodgers are not paying Ohtani to pitch next season. The 29-year-old underwent his second elbow surgery in five years this fall, and the soonest he is expected to pitch again is 2025. Because of that injury and those that preceded it, the Dodgers cannot be sure how much pitching they will get from Ohtani during the deal. But Ohtani is the biggest star in the world and is now playing for one of the sport’s most prominent franchises. The Dodgers are paying him to hit and to pitch as much as he can. But more than anything, they are paying him to be an icon.

And they will not be paying him as much annually as it seems. Ohtani’s deal contains what a person familiar with it referred to as “unprecedented deferrals” — the majority, that person said, of his annual salary. California taxes are high, and deferrals help with those. But in waiting to pay large chunks of Ohtani’s salary until after his playing years, the Dodgers also free up money to spend on his teammates now.

Those teammates include former MVPs Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman as well as all-star catcher Will Smith and a familiar cast that has not missed the playoffs in a decade. While Ohtani spent years dodging questions about what he would prioritize in his long-term baseball home, he always made clear that he wanted to win. Few franchises have won as reliably in recent years — or seem positioned to continue winning in future ones

The other thing Ohtani always made clear was that he wanted to play for a team that would let him continue to pitch and hit when he is able. That he agreed to a deal with the Dodgers suggests Los Angeles — an organization not exactly prone to letting one player dictate its direction — is willing to let him try for as long as he feels he can. The Dodgers are certainly paying him like a player they expect to pitch again at some point: More complete hitters have signed for far less annually than Ohtani did.

What Ohtani will be able to give the Dodgers as a pitcher remains to be seen. He had Tommy John surgery in 2018 and needed another surgical procedure on his elbow earlier this year. When he has been healthy, Ohtani has been dominant. Until he injured that elbow again in 2023, the right-hander had compiled three elite seasons in which he pitched to a 2.84 ERA while averaging more than 11 strikeouts per nine innings and just more than 5⅔ innings per start.