Shohei Ohtani: The $700 million man who is somehow underpaid

Major League Baseball

Updated Oct. 2, 2024 4:37 p.m. ET

As Shohei Ohtani smiles his way into the postseason, baseball smiles along with him. It really does, with a fully-loaded Cheshire cat of a grin, because why on Earth not?

MLB‘s most transcendent, mesmerizing, downright likable superstar is precisely where those vested in baseball’s present and future health would like him to be. He’s heading to the business end of the calendar in impertinent form, with interest in his every move off the charts, and with a juicy story guaranteed no matter what comes next.

Ohtani makes $70 million a year, receives and gets taxed on $2 million of it with the rest stashed for later, has an overall contract that reads $700 million over a decade — and he’s underpaid. That’s right, underpaid. Hugely so, if we’re being real about it, because no player in sports means more to his league than the 30-year-old Japanese sensation does to this one.

Patrick Mahomes is a true household name, but he is one of many in the NFL, and thanks to the Swiftie audience, he has a teammate who is just as famous as he is.

LeBron James is the alpha of the NBA, with vast numbers of supporters and just as many who root against him, but pro hoops hasn’t skipped a beat during recent postseasons that commenced without him and his Lakers being a meaningful part of it.

Perhaps only Caitlin Clark in the WNBA occupies a similar status as the overwhelming face of a sport, though even then, Angel Reese might like to point out that the rivalry between the two of them is really what makes it so good.

Ohtani, when hitting and pitching to a ludicrous degree of twin proficiency — or this season hitting and stealing bases with equal excellence — is a dream come true for MLB.

Underpaid though? Yep. Forget $700 million, does Ohtani bring a billion dollars of intangible value to baseball as a whole? You bet he does, and much more.

Betting, of course, was one thing that threatened to throw a wrinkle into his tidy story of generational brilliance, the outlandishly expensive gambling habit of his former interpreter combined with his own enhanced Tommy John surgery previously flickering as shadows that seemed to hang over season one with the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Yet both were handled with a shrug and a skip and a stolen bag, or actually dozens of them, to go along with endless thwacks of the bat, catapulting dinger after dinger into the stands on his way to 54 home runs and 59 feats of fleet-footed thievery.

Numbers, schnumbers, they don’t tell the full story. Just know this, as baseball tries to reinvent the demographic trends of its audience, this is the right star at the right time.

Is Shohei Ohtani the greatest baseball player ever?

If you’re trying to make your product feel relevant to today and genuinely contemporaneous, nothing speaks to that quite as well as a larger-than-life superhero who plays like he’s from another dimension.

Baseball looks forward to seeing him in the postseason because, yes, it is the first time he’s gotten there after those years of frustration in Anaheim, and yes, he always seems to rise to the biggest of occasions, but more than anything, because baseball looks forward to everything he does.

On Saturday, Ohtani and the Dodgers will face either the San Diego Padres or the Atlanta Braves (8:03 p.m. ET on FS1), depending on how the Wild Card clash between those teams ends up.

Ohtani’s ever-evolving saga is so watchable because it is so carefree. The effortlessness is almost absurd. If baseball is his life, then stealing bases has become his hobby, and he also came within a whisker of becoming the first NL Triple Crown winner since 1937.

Amid it all, Ohtani has remained completely chill. Even amid the move, albeit a quick one up from Orange County, and even following the weirdest scandal of modern baseball times, where his former interpreter Ippei Mizuhara purloined $16 million of the superstar’s money to meet gambling debts.

The fun part of what Ohtani’s doing is unmissable, bantering with teammates in a level of English that is really quite good, despite his refusal to speak it in interviews. He jokes around in the dugout, even on the bases sometimes, then delivers yet more explosive productivity.

“He can be goofy and playful and look like he’s really having fun playing the game,” veteran teammate Chris Taylor told the LA Times. “Then also, at the same time, be super-focused and locked in.”

“He’s almost like a little kid, trapped in a giant body,” Kiké Hernandez added. “He doesn’t necessarily always show it. But I was surprised by how much personality he has.”

Shohei Ohtani isn’t all business, all the time. “He’s almost like a little kid, trapped in a giant body,” teammate Kiké Hernandez says. (Photo by Meg Oliphant/Getty Images)

The Dodgers won 98 games after reaching tallies of 100, 111 and 106 over the preceding three seasons, but along with the New York Yankees are the widely-accepted favorite to win it all.

Ohtani’s batting exploits have been backed up by Teoscar Hernández and Mookie Betts, but the pitching will need to overcome a season-long spate of injury issues to be a full source of support.

Yet there is an unquestionable lightness about the group, a fact alluded to frequently by manager Dave Roberts. The Dodgers have been here before, as winners of the NL West for 11 of the past 12 years, though with their only World Series title since 1988 being the 2020 COVID-affected championship.

For now, at least, there is plenty to smile about and potentially a lot to look ahead to. L.A. has baseball’s best player and best story, and they’re getting him cheap.

Martin Rogers is a columnist for FOX Sports. Follow him on Twitter @MRogersFOX.