Ohtani's Dodgers Future: Contract Insights Amid Ownership Changes

Shohei Otani earlier this week said, regardless if the Dodgers are sold, which would include, of course, Mark Walter, who has basically poured a lot of his own money into the Los Angeles Dodgers, apparently, according to The Athletic, Otani will stay with L.A., regardless of which. Now, we did understand that he's got a clause in his contract that's called a key man clause. He can exercise that. If the team is sold, he can bail. But for this to come out tells me that it's legit. Like, I don't know why it would unless it would be legitimate. I don't think you'd see a reverse course in something like this. So certainly really good news for the Dodgers. And Otani has what we would call like the lifetime contract with all that deferred money. If he chooses to stay, and why wouldn't he? I mean, Otani probably looks at it, too. I'm like one injury away from not playing like like everybody else. Keep the money. Stick with it. Take that deferred money for the rest of your life. Makes sense to me. It does. You know, it's interesting to see that this is in his contract to begin with. And it wasn't we didn't know about this prior. You know, I think it's from I've always want players to have the most control that they possibly can have. So to see teams give these types of unique clauses to players, I think is is always good for the player. But listen, I signed on for this team, this ownership, this front office. And if you just sell the team and they change directions completely, that's not what I agreed to. You know, you agreed to me that I would be here long term. You would be here long term, like, you know, the verbiage that you were going to build this together. And if one of them bails, well, then the player should be able to leave. You know, we see this in college or a player commits to somewhere in the coaching. No, he's committing to that coach. He wants to be there for that institution, for that coach. I think it should be somewhat popular or commonplace among player contracts to say, I'm here for this owner and this GM. And if that changes, I have the right to leave as well. And Walter in under investigation right now and also sold the Los Angeles Lakers. So if he ends up having to sell the Dodgers to then, you know, this would sort of be the big story there.