The Los Angeles Dodgers’ offseason is generating headlines by serving up enormous numbers. First, it was $700 million to Shohei Ohtani, then it was the $680 million of that deal that will be deferred. Next, it was $136.56 million guaranteed to new trade acquisition Tyler Glasnow and $325 million to Japanese pitching superstar Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Finally, it was $23.5 million to secure one year of slugger Teoscar Hernández. All told, the Dodgers have committed more than $1.2 billion to new major-league contracts since the end of the 2023 season.
Unless your employment brings you in frequent contact with the history of the earth, the federal budget or astrophysics, your brain is probably already struggling to wrangle the millions and billions of it all. As one scientific study put it, when faced with numbers in those unfamiliar, stratospheric territories, we tend to default back to “a few categories, such as ‘big’ and ‘really big.’”
No matter how you look at the recent spending executed by Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman and approved by ownership point person Mark Walter, “really big” is a fair assessment. This financial firehose, however, draws much of its power from an important twist that we may one day look back on as the real story of the Dodgers’ splashy offseason.
Valued at $5.24 billion, per Sportico, the legacy franchise that left Ebbets Field for Chavez Ravine is far from a start-up, but Ohtani is effectively acting as a rockstar investor, entrusting Friedman and Walter with his money — and endorsing their operation with his presence — in hopes of achieving exponential gains. The literal dollars of Ohtani’s compensation, of course, are already set. His investment would pay off in wins, and perhaps in rings.