Los Angeles Angels' Shohei Ohtani walks in the dugout during the ninth inning of the team's baseball game against the Detroit Tigers in Anaheim, Calif., on Sept. 16.Ashley Landis/The Associated Press
If you believe in such things, the Toronto Blue Jays have been in on every brand-name free agent since the beginning of recorded time.
Every off-season, it’s the same thing. The Jays are in on this guy, or that guy, or all the guys. If the rumour mill was real life, the Jays would be Murderers’ Row.
The beauty of this con is that Toronto never has to declare anything. It alludes to a generalized openness to spending big, an intermediary in the American media firms up the idea with a name and when it doesn’t happen the Jays get the credit for trying.
So just as shopping season begins – surprise, surprise – a top U.S.-based insider has the Jays making a “strong push” for Shohei Ohtani. The same person has six teams lumped in the ‘strong push’ contingent, and three others leading the pack, but still. Toronto gets a mention. That’s all it takes to make news up here.
If in the past, this ‘in on’ thing has been a trick the Jays play amongst their peers and on their customers, well shame on them. But all is forgiven if the Jays make good on this one.
It’s difficult to price Ohtani’s market because there has never been a player like him. He’s a Cy Young-calibre pitcher and an MVP-level hitter. It’s difficult to get a player who has one of those abilities, and nearly impossible to possess both, making Ohtani’s value exponential. Even still, statistics cannot capture what he represents.
As in any perpetual growth market, the sports world is filling with startups and knockoffs. You like League X? How about you try League Y?
League Y is just like League X, but in a different country, or with different sorts of players, or slightly different rules. It’s the thing you already love, just less of it.
About once a day, I try to meditate briefly on the fact that Tom Brady owns a chunk of a professional pickleball team. It reminds me that what I do is ridiculous.
So much sports creates limitless choice. The vast majority of that choice is crap, but as long as you’re not discerning, it’s there to be consumed.
Under those conditions, real, undeniable, best-in-class quality is more than valuable. It becomes invaluable.
Why would a small, terrible, unwatched soccer club in Florida pay Lionel Messi somewhere between US$50-million and US$60-million a year, including team equity, to play for it?
That amount is more than Inter Miami’s total revenue the year before Messi arrived. Not profit. Revenue.
On an accounting level, it makes no sense. But on a marketing level, it’s a move you must make if you can. It turns a crummy team in a crummy soccer market in a crummy league into a global player, overnight.
One day, Miami was nothing. The next day, kids in Bogota to Beijing wanted one of those hot pink jerseys (an aesthetically brilliant choice).
Messi did that all by himself. He took a (relatively speaking) worthless sports commodity and made it top tier. Just by putting it on, he turned a Timex into a Rolex.
How many athletes in the world have this power? Twelve or 15, maybe. It changes.
Most of them play soccer. Some, such as Novak Djokovic or Rory McIlroy, can’t be hired. Ohtani is one of them, and the only baseball player.
So what’s he worth? Well, how much you got?
The number getting thrown around these days is US$400-million. That represents a discount from previous guesstimates because Ohtani, 29, just had elbow surgery and won’t pitch until 2025. Let’s call it US$50-million a year for eight years.
If that sounds obscene, get used to it. Once Ohtani sets this mark, everyone underneath him will want something just short of it. Which is to say, there is no escaping the inflation Ohtani is about to create. In five years time, $50-million for a power-hitting shortstop who isn’t constantly injured may seem like a bargain.
The question the Jays have to ask themselves now is not whether they can fit Ohtani in, or afford Ohtani or even if they want Ohtani. It’s how can they pass up this once-in-a-lifetime chance at a player who is so special that he automatically confers upon his employer the imprimatur of brand superiority? They can’t. No rational business could.
Toronto can afford Ohtani at twice the price being discussed. Three times, even. Easily.
When Rogers Communications Inc. bought the club, it was valued at US$150-million. It’s now worth more than 10 times that on paper, and more in actuality. For the two decades it has owned the club, Rogers has been accruing a minimum nine-figure premium every season before it sells a single beer.
But like Ohtani and statistics, EBITDA isn’t the determining factor. It’s about ambition. How big do you want your team to be?
The biggest team in Canada? Or baseball? Or North America? Or the biggest team, full stop?
It’s hard to imagine a Canadian baseball club astride the world stage, but that dream begins with a player like Ohtani. And there’s only one of him available.
Here’s what I fully expect to happen with the Jays and Ohtani – nothing. They’ll half-heartedly pitch him and he’ll pick L.A. Were you him, you’d pick L.A. too.
But there is a scenario in which the Jays get in front of the man, pass him a blank cheque and say, ‘You fill in the amount.’
However much he puts on there, it’s worth it.