Shohei Ohtani’s 10-year, $700 million deal with the Los Angeles Dodgers makes him the highest-paid athlete in North American sports history, shining a blinding light on baseball’s broken system.
MLB is the only league among the big four to operate without a salary cap or a salary cap floor, and it’s strangling the competitive balance in the sport year after year.
In a league where teams are all owned by billionaires who make the rules, it’s hard to muster up much sympathy for their perceived plight in situations like this. However, a deal such as Ohtani’s shows just how uneven the playing field is in baseball, and it’s on;y getting worse.