The Gift That Keeps on Giving.

Everybody okay with Ohtani's contract now?

Friday night in America, the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani became the sixth player in the history of Major League Baseball to hit 40 home runs and steal 40 bases in the same season. He is the first MLB player ever to reach those totals before September. A historic 50-50 season, while improbable, is in play.

In short, Ohtani’s a boss. But you knew that, because you read our piece during the off-season explaining why Ohtani, then a free agent, was a steal at $600 million or more. Months later, he has already exceeded the Dodgers’ wildest hopes for his first year under his monster new $700M contract. (That whole gambling thing went away in a New York minute, too.)

In recognition of his 40/40 achievement, we’re re-posting our examination of his worth from several months ago. It’s yours free — a thank you for being here.

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Originally posted 12.5.23

It’s amazing how many people who follow baseball misunderstand the conversation around Shohei Ohtani and his value, and I find that instructive, not insulting. Some baseball people, for example, become enveloped in complex financial analyses of a two-way player who currently can’t pitch because of injury: What is the risk factor to a franchise if his arm doesn’t come all the way back? Others close-focus on Ohtani’s age (29) and the performance arc of the kind of contract — 10 years, 12 years — that he’s likely to sign. Will he still be a unicorn when he’s 36 or 38?

All of it is interesting. And all of it falls short.

Signing Shohei Ohtani to an MLB deal is a business decision that involves a whole other nation, not just the one in which you’re likely reading this. The business of baseball involves so much more than the baseball itself. Any team rich enough or well-enough payroll positioned to chase him ought to be all in, and at staggering numbers. The ones that aren’t all in suffer from a failure of vision, pure and simple.

Ohtani is unlike other players, but you already knew that. He is a premier hitter who is also a premier pitcher (again: currently injury-constrained from throwing), which is absurd to the point of historical significance. We’ve never seen anyone like him in our lifetimes, period.

But even that isn’t it. It’s the fact that Ohtani is also unlike all other Japanese players. A country that is bona fide baseball crazy is fanatical for Ohtani above all others. He’s had a cadre of 50 or so Japanese journalists documenting him at every turn of his Angels career to date. Fans in Japan go to extreme lengths to follow his exploits and get inning-by-inning updates on his pitch days.

It’s a gold mine.

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Let’s do a thought exercise — and full disclosure, I was not the first to imagine this. But around MLB, the local broadcast rights packages are self-immolating, with regional sports networks either bankrupt or headed in that direction. Glum as that sounds, it’s a remarkable business opportunity for any team that signs Ohtani.

The future of baseball-watching is likely to involve direct team access either through MLB or — and I think this is increasingly more likely — the local franchise itself, in the form of an app/streaming service. Basically, instead of paying for cable and watching the local team on a network, you’ll just buy the season package from the team itself and watch whenever and however you want.

This is an exportable concept.

Japan has a population of roughly 125 million. The self-identified fan base for its pro league, Nippon Professional Baseball, has been placed in the low to mid-20 millions and occasionally up to 30 million. The Japan national team, of which Ohtani was the outsized star during the World Baseball Classic, has a fan base of roughly 29 million folks.

So, let’s say there are 1 in 5 serious fans among the people of the nation, based upon those numbers. They love Ohtani unreservedly. But let’s dampen that effect dramatically, since there’s about to be money on the line in this exercise, and agree that despite their fanaticism, perhaps only 1% of the people in Japan would actually pay $20 a month for an Angels app (or insert your favorite team here) to watch Ohtani whenever they want.

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That’s 1.25 million subscribers. But to stay conservative, round it down to 1M even — no, wait. Eight hundred thousand. We’re now at slightly more than half a percent of the population, no matter what those more robust numbers might suggest.

Eight hundred thousand fans in Japan paying twenty bucks a month for the Dodgers app in order to watch Ohtani play equals $16 million per month.

Still too crazy? Okay, let’s drop all the numbers again and say the team collects only $10 million per month, which would mean 500k subscribers — less than one half of one percent of the population of Japan.

Ten million dollars.

Every month.

All season.

For a decade or more.

Does anyone still think a $600 million investment in Shohei Ohtani wouldn’t work out?

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We have factored nothing else into the mix. Not the benefit of Ohtani helping a team win (update: the Dodgers entered play Aug. 25 with a 77-53 record and a 3.5-game lead in the National League West), nor the merchandise sales, nor the national and international team branding, nor advertising.

In his day, Ichiro Suzuki generated the most frantic, over-the-top coverage from the Asian media that I had ever witnessed. Ohtani’s coverage dwarfs that by orders of magnitude. Can Ohtani help a team win? His time with the Angels notwithstanding, you’d sure think so. Is he a unique player? Though the use of that word gets tortured in our everyday communications, he is indeed unique.

He is a baseball icon. But signing Ohtani is also a business decision, and an easy one, especially given where the broadcast market for MLB teams is heading. If your favorite team has money and means and is not doing everything it can to be in the conversation, you really ought to ask why. Because somebody is about to sign Ohtani to a deal so rich it makes people shake their heads in astonishment — and make out like a bandit.