Zaidi: Giants made comparable offer to $700M deal Shohei Ohtani received from Dodgers
The San Francisco Giants made three offers to Shohei Ohtani, including a final proposal that president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi called "very comparable if not identical" to the record $700 million, 10-year contract the Japanese two-way star agreed to with the rival Los Angeles Dodgers.
Ohtani spent two hours with the Giants for a ballpark meeting with Zaidi, Greg Johnson, former catcher Buster Posey and new manager Bob Melvin on Dec. 2. Zaidi said San Francisco increased its offers to meet Ohtani's requests.
"The proposal that was made was very comparable if not identical to what he wound up agreeing to," Zaidi said during a conference call Tuesday.
But when the Giants got the sense Ohtani seemed to want to stay in Southern California, Zaidi said there was a realization it might be a hard agreement to make happen despite the proposed financial commitment. Also, San Francisco's executives hadn't heard anything a couple of days after their latest offer and were waiting into last weekend to find out Ohtani's choice.
When asked to specify whether the Giants' proposal was nearly equivalent to what Los Angeles offered, Zaidi noted, "Structure and total compensation, yes."
