Shohei Ohtani: Why he could be Major League Baseball’s first $1 billion player

Now that Shohei Ohtani is off the trade market, we can focus speculation on the next pertinent topic: What’s his value on the free agent market?

After all, the Angels’ decision not to trade Ohtani before Tuesday’s deadline only ensures that he’ll remain with them through season’s end. That’s when he becomes a free agent, and when the bidding gets really intense.

At various times in his American career, Shohei Ohtani has shown the ability to be both the game’s best hitter and one of its best pitchers.

Rookie of the Year in 2018 and Most Valuable Player in 2021, he is clearly the game’s biggest offensive threat right now. Entering Saturday’s play, Ohtani ranked first in the majors in slugging percentage (.681), OPS (1.077), total bases (263), home runs (39), extra base hits (62) plus a passel of SABRmetric categories.

His 2023 pitching stats are less dominant, but there he has history on his side. Just last season Ohtani ranked third in pitcher WAR, sixth in earned run average and sixth also in strikeouts.

While off his 2022 line, his pitching stats this season are good enough that — in combination with his offensive production — he leads the majors in total WAR by an embarrassing amount. Ohtani’s combined WAR to date is 7.6; with Ronald Acuña Jr. and Ha-Seong Kim second at 5.2.

Put another way, the gap between the total WAR of Ohtani and Acuña Jr. or Kim is as great as the gap between those two runners-up and the guy back in 58th position.

When we assess a player’s value on the open market, a number of factors come into play, some of which we do not have the data to specify. Those factors include marketability (how much does he profit a team by ticket/merchandise sales?) and team morale.

But we can put numbers to the most tangible value Ohtani or any other player possesses — his on-field productivity. When we do that with the game’s only two-way player, the enormity of his value this winter begins to become apparent.

Let’s start with the basics. Ohtani is being paid $30 million by the Los Angeles Angels in 2023 to both pitch and DH. Since he is effectively two players with one salary, we need to compare both skills against his peers, looking both at their salaries and their productivity. For this purpose, we’ll make the one arbitrary decision in the process, splitting Ohtani’s $30 million, half to hitting and half to pitching.

Begin with the pitching side, which is the less exceptional of the two. To this point, Ohtani has accumulated 2.8 games of pitching WAR. Among 128 pitchers who have either been full-time starters or were paid at least $10 million to start games for their team, his WAR ranks 12th, and is substantially higher than the 1.081 average WAR for the group of 128.

That means Ohtani is in the borderline elite class of starters.

We’ve allocated $15 million of Ohtani’s salary to his pitching responsibilities. The average for the group is $9.971 million, so he’s also well-paid for what he does. Still that $15 million only ties for 30th among the 128, lagging well behind the ultra-elite — Justin Verlander ($43.33 million), Max Scherzer ($43.333 million) and Gerritt Cole ($36 million). Non-productive pitchers of the stripe of Patrick Corbin ($32.5 million) and Jacob deGrom ($30 million) also populate the $30 million class.

If we compare Ohtani’s 2.8 WAR with the group’s 138.4 total WAR, it works out that Ohtani is responsible for about 2 percent of the total productivity of the 128. By logic, then, his value ought to equate to about two percent of their collective $1.276 billion salary. The precise math sets that value — based on his performance compared to that of his peers — at $25.827 million.

And that’s just for pitching, the skill he’s been least effective at in 2023. Now it’s time to calculate the value of what Ohtani has really done well in 2023, hit.

Ohtani is one of 31 players who have been used as their team’s primary designated hitter this season. (This includes Michael Brantley, who has been injured but who remains on Houston’s payroll to the tune of $14 million, a sum that cannot be ignored.)

The average salary of those 31 players is $9.918, so if we allocate $15 million of Ohtani’s total salary to his offense he ranks among the position upper crust. Even so, eight DHs make more than he does, among them Miguel Cabrera ($32 million), Giancarlo Stanton ($32 million) and Bryce Harper ($27.538 million.)

From a pay standpoint, Ohtani’s $15 million puts him squarely in a class with Jorge Soler and Charlie Blackmon.

Based solely on productivity, however, Ohtani is in a DH class of his own. Through games of Thursday, he had compiled 4.7 offensive WAR, a total that is more than twice s great as any of his peers. Yordan Alvarez is second at 2.1.

Again comparing Ohtani’s 4.7 offensive WAR with the 21.6 cumulative WAR of all 31 primary DHs, we can see that Ohtani has produced slightly more than one-fifth of the aggregate. That puts his on-field value at roughly one-fifth of the total $298.25 million paid to those 31 DHs, or an eye-opening $62.738 million.

Add Ohtani’s $62.738 million value as an offensive player to his previously calculated $25.827 million value as a pitcher and you have something approximating baseball’s first $90 million player … $88.565 million to be precise.

Multiply that by however many seasons you think Ohtani will be signed for and you can get a sense of what it may take to sign him this winter. You can, that is, once you also calculate in those off-field factors, marketability and the like.

Seven years? Probably not long enough, but it works out to $620 million, and that’s just to start the conversation.

Of course Ohtani is only 28 this season, so he may insist on 10 years. That would be $820 million plus a little something extra for the off-field factors. Can you say $1 billion?