Well that’s one fewer thing for the Los Angeles Dodgers to worry about.
Amid team chairman Mark Walter’s shock decision to sell the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5 billion, it was quickly reported that Walter has no similar plans to offload the Dodgers. That is rather important, as doing so would open the door for Shohei Ohtani to hit the free agent market.
Ohtani has a “key man” clause in his contract that allows him to opt out of his 10-year, $700 million deal if either Walter or president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman leave the team.
A day after the Lakers sale was reported, The Athletic has now relayed that Ohtani is unlikely to terminate his deal even if Walter does sell in the near future, according to a source with knowledge of the Ohtani camp’s thinking.
That’s honestly not too surprising. Yes, Ohtani hitting the open market would create a circus like baseball has never before seen. It’s not even that he’s a four-time MVP and two-time World Series champion, it’s that he brings with him the full attention of Japan, the fourth-largest economy in the world. You don’t want to know what certain teams would pay to take that from the Dodgers, or what the Dodgers would pay to stop them.
Becoming a free agent again would be the way for Ohtani to maximize his income, but the thing about Ohtani is that he doesn’t really seem to care about maximizing his income, at least when it comes to his MLB salary.
We saw that when Ohtani first landed his $700 million deal. Yes, that is an ungodly amount of money for a baseball player (and yet, since surpassed by Juan Soto). But it wasn’t created via a bidding war, as most mega-deals are. Instead, it has been reported that Ohtani simply presented his serious suitors with his price tag.
The Dodgers agreed, as did the San Francisco Giants and Toronto Blue Jays, while the Los Angeles Angels turned him down. Ohtani picked the Dodgers, who didn’t even suggest the deferred money structure that has become something of a hot topic. As Friedman recalled about the deferred money, which has given the Dodgers even more payroll flexibility, "I wouldn't have had the guts to propose it.”
Had Ohtani wanted more money, or all of his money immediately, he almost certainly would have gotten it.
So when it’s reported Ohtani wouldn’t be interested in becoming a free agent again, it’s fairly believable. Playing for the Dodgers has obviously worked out quite well for him, with two MVP awards and two World Series rings in two years, as he continues to reach a level of celebrity in Japan that has no American equivalent.
That celebrity has allowed to him to make a reported nine figures per year in endorsements, hence why he might not want to make a notable change in his career right now.
The “key man” clause is seemingly unprecedented when it comes to MLB player contracts. As The Athletic notes, we have seen it before though with Friedman, as then-Tampa Bay Rays manager Joe Maddon exercised the same clause in his contract when Friedman left the Rays to take over the Dodgers.
There is also the example of Manchester City star Erling Haaland, who linked his contract to the presence of then-manager Pep Guardiola. That clause was later removed.