Shohei Ohtani Stuns Baseball World After Inking $700 Million Deal

Published on December 8th, 2023 4:29 pm EST
Written By: Dave Manuel


It's clear that the Los Angeles Dodgers went into the Shohei Ohtani sweepstakes prepared to outspend everybody else.

The tactic worked, as the club announced that they had inked Ohtani to a 10-year, $700 million deal.

This dwarfs the next highest deal by dollar value - Mike Trout's 12 year, $426.5 million deal that was signed with the Angeles in 2019.

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With that being said, here are the 10 largest contracts in the history of Major League Baseball:

Shohei Ohtani, 10 years/$700 million
Mike Trout, 12 years/$426.5 million
Mookie Betts, 12 years/$365 million
Aaron Judge, 9 years/$360 million
Manny Machado, 11 years/$350 million
Francisco Lindor, 10 years/$341 million
Fernando Tatis, Jr., 14 years/$340 million
Bryce Harper, 13 years/$330 million
Giancarlo Stanton, 13 years/$325 million
Corey Seager, 10 years/$325 million

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It seems like it was only yesterday when Alex Rodriguez signed a seemingly league-breaking 10-year, $275 million contract with the Texas Rangers.

It's been a while since the league has been truly shocked by a contract, and the $700 million deal for Ohtani surely fits the bill.

Teams certainly take a big risk when they ink a player to a monster contract. Some contracts work out for the team (the Mookie Betts deal, for instance, looks like a shrewd piece of business for the Dodgers), while other deals end up becoming albatrosses (Giancarlo Stanton, for instance, has been riddled with injuries for most of his team with the Yankees.

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Time will tell whether or not the Ohtani deal was a smart move for the Dodgers.