The rich about to get richer…

The Los Angeles aces are back, and then some. To his Ocean’s Eleven of rotations—marquee-worthy names everywhere—Friedman on Aug. 1 added Skubal, the two-time defending American League Cy Young Award winner, in a heist of a trade with the Tigers. In a span of 32 months, through free agency and trades, Friedman acquired Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Blake Snell, Roki Sasaki and Skubal. They represent six regular-season and postseason MVP awards, four Cy Young Awards and $1.38 billion in salaries, or about what it cost to pay half the players in the majors in 2011.

In the Big Four of Skubal, Yamamoto, Snell and Ohtani, the Dodgers have acquired four of the five pitchers with the lowest ERA in baseball over the past four years (minimum 50 starts), with only the Pirates’ Paul Skenes having evaded their clutches. In their combined postseason careers, the Big Four are 18–8 with a 2.85 ERA.

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Ohtani, a phenom in Japan for the Nippon Ham Fighters, was the subject of an intense recruiting campaign after he was posted. Although he pitched just 25 innings in 2017 because of an ankle injury, in 2016 he had a 1.86 ERA in 140 innings and hit .322 with 22 home runs. Because he was younger than 25 years old, Ohtani was subject to international signing rules, which capped his bonus at $3.557 million and limited him to a rookie salary scale (the signing team also had to pay a $20 million posting fee to the Fighters).

That essentially meant all 30 teams could afford to go after Ohtani; if he had waited until he was 25 to come to MLB, he would have commanded a $200 million contract. Ohtani narrowed his finalists to the Angels, Dodgers, Giants, Padres, Mariners, Rangers and Cubs, and then he signed with the Angels for a $2.315 million bonus.

https://www.si.com/mlb/video/ohtani-made-in-iwate-the-untold-story-of-shohei-ohtani-s-roots-in-japan