The Los Angeles Dodgers, with their shrewd strategy of deferred contracts, don’t have the highest salary obligations in Major League Baseball this season, after all.
That distinction belongs once again to the New York Mets, according to MLB’s present-day calculations, obtained by USA TODAY Sports.
The Dodgers, thanks to heavily deferred contracts to Shohei Ohtani and some of their biggest stars, have an opening-day payroll of $321.3 million, second to the Mets’ payroll of $323.1 million.
The Dodgers’ secret is the deferred payments that dramatically lower the present-day value of the contracts. Led by the bulk of Ohtani’s 10-year, $700 million contract, the deferrals also lower the club's luxury tax commitments and penalties.
Ohtani is deferring $68 million of his $70 million annual salary, lowering his present-day value to $28.2 million of cash obligations to the Dodgers this year. It leaves Ohtani as only the 18th highest-paid player in baseball as calculated by the MLB Labor Relations Department in 2025. He’s the second-highest paid player on his team behind Tyler Glasnow’s $30 million salary, 14th overall in baseball.
It’s similar to the other heavily-deferred contracts negotiated by the Dodgers.
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