MLB Insider Tom Verducci - Ohtani Wanted to Defer ALL of His $700M Contract _ The Rich Eisen Show

I have questions , Tom .

I've got a lot of questions .

I have many questions .

All right , give me the tiktok on what happened with Shoe Otani uh at the end of last week and then that culminated with his Instagram post that he's going to the Dodgers .

Yeah .

Well , I think he wound up at a place we thought maybe since he was in high school , right ?

The Dodgers thought they were gonna sign him out of high school and when this free agency began , I think we all expect that he was going to wind up with the Dodgers and how it came to be .

No one saw this coming in terms of Toronto being really the only other finalists here of the sweepstakes and especially the the contract .

700 million just was a jaw-dropping number .

Of course , it took a couple of days before we figured out .

Well , it's maybe not exactly 700 million .

It's more like 460 million in present day dollars .

But I think Rich , you have to look at this differently .

First of all , we know he's the unicorn , right ?

So why not have a unicorn contract ?

And it is there's nothing like it that never has been in baseball completely legal , completely within the , the bounds of the collective bargaining agreement .

And most importantly , this was Shoe's idea sho he sat down with both teams and said I want defer most of my money .

He actually started out telling his agent Nes Boleo can I defer everything ?

And he looked up , he was like , well , you can't play for free , you have to play for at least the minimum and they settled on 2 million .

So now Otani is making less than Austin Barnes , the backup catcher for the Dodgers and he's the most talented player in the history of baseball , making less than a backup catcher .

So , you know , the Dodgers got themselves , you can say this for a $700 million contract , a true bargain so much so that now they're going after Yashin , Nobu Yamamoto and Josh Hater because of the money they saved on Otani .

It's crazy .

It is all right .

So let's take it one at a time here .

So why , why did Otani um not go in the direction of the northeast ?

Why didn't the , because I imagine the Yankees and the Red Sox would have fallen all over themselves to enrich him in the same way the Dodgers did or the Blue Jays were willing to or everyone else .

Why , why , why did Otani not go in that direction ?

No question .

You're right .

And I applaud him for not using those teams to drive up the bidding and just be a stalking horse , right ?

I mean , if you're a free agent , you always want to get those teams involved if for nothing else to get the price up .

But remember when he was a free agent , he first signed with the Angels , uh he could have waited two more years and made more than $200 million .

Instead of coming over at age 23 he signs for 2.3 million with the Angels in a minor league contract .

And he said at that time , he did not want Yankees Red Sox Mets , you name it , the Acela Corridor ruled them out right way .

First of all , this guy wants to play climate controlled or really good weather .

It's important to him because he's a two way player , doesn't want to go through cold weather , humidity , wind conditions , all those things that can disrupt your schedule , preacher routine just didn't want the big city , but most importantly , outdoors iffy weather .

And that was the same case this time around where he just ruled out those teams .

They were never in it .

I don't , I don't even think the Giants were in it based on their ballpark , their weather .

The fact that they're not really a playoff caliber team right now .

And who should say when they will be so really , it was just Toronto , which is a dome which he loves , by the way , his numbers are great there .

It reminds him a lot of the Sapporo Dome where he played in Japan and the Dodgers , the Angels really weren't in it .

They weren't getting to this kind of a number so limited field and this guy maxed out at the greatest contract ever for an athlete .

So the Angels .

So , I guess in , in , in retrospect , the Angels should have flipped him a couple of summers ago or something like that .

I mean , is that a fair 2020 hindsight to have here Tom at all ?

You can , you could definitely make that argument just based on , you know , the arc of a team and especially the Angels who haven't been in the playoffs in forever to just try to get something at back .

But I look at it this way rich , this guy really is , you know , our Babe Ruth and this generation even better .

I mean , babe Ruth didn't play this long as a two way player , the way Otani has and he was drawing card .

It , it's like this priceless gem that you have and you , it's , you have something of value and you just don't trade it up so you can get what a few more players in your minor league system to be better down the road .

You know , Artie Moreno , you can make a lot of arguments about how he runs that team uh smartly or not , but he loves having star players there who will draw fans and those people got to watch show .

Hey , for six years there's value to that .

And listen , this year when they , at the trade deadline , they had a winning record , uh , a positive run differential , like two or three games out of it .

You can't pull the plug on a seat .

I wasn't talking about it .

I wasn't talking about it this year .

I'm talking about it last year because I mean , let , let's be straight up here , Tom .

I mean , you can't be o obviously , the number seven is surprising and as , as is the structure .

Um , but two summers ago , you have to sit here and think to yourself , are we willing to go to five ?

Are we willing to go to six ?

Because that's gonna be the number I , I , if we keep playing this thing out and , and , and I'll tell you , you know , uh , again , you know , Sue , you know , Susie Schuster , you know , her because you guys , you know , met years ago when the Angels with , uh , with , with Tim Salmon and sad .

I mean , those guys weren't like trout or Otani , but everybody was filling up that stadium because they were winning .

So you put some winning players in there , they're gonna , they're gonna fill the place up , Tom .

That's she , she was there .

You were there ?

I was there .

That's the , that's my point about it with the Angels here .

There's no doubt that what you said is true .

I mean , putting a winning team in there is gonna be more attractive , you look at their attendance and they still haven't gotten back to the level where they were with winning teams so that there's no question about that .

I , I just think with Otani , you're never going to win a trade like that and more than that he can come back and haunt you because he is just the unicorn of the game .

It's just this priceless asset that someone like Artie Moreno who loves having named players who bring people to the ballpark was just not going to trade .

In fact , teams called and it was Artie Moreno , the owner , not the general manager who took him off the trade market that year , two years ago .

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