Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani Could Have Signed 15-Year Deal, Says Agent
The Los Angeles Dodgers and Shohei Ohtani union is one that has already felt like a lifetime of success.
To deliver a championship, a National League MVP, and become the first-ever player in MLB history to hit 50 or more home runs and swipe 50 or more stolen bases in the same season is something that players would hope to accomplish in an entire career.
Ohtani not only did it in his first season with the Dodgers, but is still ramping up to return to pitching, where he has a career 3.01 ERA during his 481.1 MLB innings.
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The deal that got Ohtani to the Dodgers after six seasons with the Los Angeles Angels was a massive $700 million, 10-year deal inked in December 2023. Ohtani’s agent, Nez Balelo, recently revealed at Sportico’s Invest West conference that the deal easily could have been up to 15 years long, until Ohtani’s age-44 season.
“We could have went to 13, 14, 15 years,” Balelo said. “But Shohei wanted to always kind of keep the integrity of where he’s at as a player. He just didn’t want to have the end of his storybook career tail off and then on year 13, 14 and 15, it’s just like who is this guy? You can’t even run down first and he’s not a guy anymore.”
With the kind of success Ohtani has already had, without yet unleashing the pitching facet of his game in a Dodgers uniform, and the kind of money Ohtani is making in the highest AAV the sport has ever seen in a contract, it wasn’t surprising that Balelo said he would do the same thing if he could do it all over again.
“We wouldn’t do anything different,” Balelo said. “He won a championship. He went to the right team. No regrets.”
At the time, Ohtani’s contract was the richest in the history of the sport, but Juan Soto has since signed a 15-year, $765 million deal with the New York Mets.
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Photo Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images
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