MLB Rumors: Shohei Ohtani's Next Contract Given 80% Chance to Top $500 Million

How do you treat a player who could be an All-Star as a hitter and a pitcher on the free agent market? Sportsbooks expect Ohtani will become the first player in American sports history to sign a contract worth $500 million. Let's get into it.

Kyle Newman

Jan 3 2023, 12:11pm | 3 min read

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MLB Rumors: Shohei Ohtani's Next Contract Given 80% Chance to Top $500 Million

Shohei Ohtani is a unicorn. The first true two-way player in MLB history. Ohtani hits like he’s a top-20 batter in the majors and he pitches at a near Cy Young caliber. How do you treat a player who could be an All-Star as a hitter and a pitcher on the free agent market? Well, sportsbooks expect the bidding to reach levels never before seen in the history of American sports. That’s right, the books believe that Ohtani will become the first player in American sports history to sign a contract worth $500 million.

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Shohei Ohtani is given -400 odds, or an implied 80% chance to top $500 million. He’s given just +250 odds, or an implied 28.6% chance to fall short of that mark. The Cubs had better odds to sign Carlos Correa, +250. So expectations are high.

Currently, only two players in sports history have signed contracts worth $500 million or more. Cristiano Ronaldo’s contract with Al-Nassr is valued at just over $536 million, and Lionel Messi’s contract with Barcelona was worth $674 million. Patrick Mahomes’s contract could top the $500 million dollar mark with the Chiefs if he hits all his incentives, but the base salary falls just short at $477 million.

MLB setting new contract records isn’t a new thing. When Mike Trout signed his $426.5 million contract in 2019, it was the second biggest in the world, behind only Messi. Of the 18 largest contracts given out in sports history, 14 of them come from MLB. The only non-MLB stars with bigger contracts are Messi, Ronaldo, Mahomes, and star boxer, Canelo Alvarez. So while Ohtani’s reaching the $500 million mark on his contract may seem out of line for a sport with such a massive wealth disparity even between clubs, the truth is that this is how baseball operates. They give out bigger and longer-term deals than any other sport in the world. The only way to beat an MLB contract is to be a transformational athlete.