Did some research on deferred money in MLB and how it effects the teams threshold for the luxury tax.
In a nutshell, if a team defers money ,it gets applied to their cap number based on how much is deferred and for how many years.
So if a team offers a 10 year 500 million dollar contract, it's a 50 mil aav. But if say 300 mil is deferred, the remaining 20 million would be the number towards the cap , plus the aav of the deferred money. So if the 300 mil was deferred over 30 years, it's a 10 mil luxury tax hit per year plus the 20 mil towards the cap. For a luxury tax hit of 30 mil. Yes it helps but isn't a clean Wipeout of the tax hit.
Plus the deferred money counts towards the luxury tax at an aav until the deferment ends.
So in the above scenario, the team will continue to get that 10 million dollar hit on the tax long after the player is gone, until the deferment is paid off. Will be interesting to see how much of Ohtanis contract is deferred, and for how long.