In December 2023, the Dodgers signed Shohei Ohtani to what was then the largest free-agent contract in the history of baseball, while simultaneously deferring around 97% of the contract’s costs until 2034 and thereafter. They followed this up with the biggest pitching contract in baseball history, signing Yoshinobu Yamamoto to a 12-year deal - committing more than one billion dollars [cue Austin Powers voice] to that pair of Japanese players alone. For context, in their most recent estimate, Forbes said half the teams in baseball were worth, in their entirety, two billion dollars or less.
MLB is broken(er)
