Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball recently agreed on a new posting system, paving the way for Japanese superstar to come over to the MLB this offseason as originally planned.
The two sides are reportedly scheduled for a conference call around 10 a.m. Pacific time on Friday to agreed on a ratification, with Ohtani set to officially be posted soon after.
Ohtani’s representatives are already hard at work though, as they have sent out a memo to all 30 teams asking how they would plan to use the two-way player if they were to sign him.
It appears that Ohtani has some other criteria before signing with a team as well, as according to Jon Morosi of MLB Network, teams believe that Ohtani does not want to play alongside another Japanese star:
Shohei Ohtani development: Multiple @MLB team execs believe Ohtani may actually prefer to sign with a club that doesn’t already have a Japanese star; Ohtani’s camp has not commented on that. @MLBNetwork
— Jon Morosi (@jonmorosi) December 1, 2017
If that is indeed the case then it’s huge news, as two big market teams with interest in Ohtani, the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees, both have Japanese pitchers on their roster in Kenta Maeda and Masahiro Tanaka, respectively.
It will be interesting to see if Ohtani is willing to meet with either club when he repotedly will meet with teams in Los Angeles beginning next week, via Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic:
Japanese media has reported that Ohtani is in Los Angeles. He is expected to meet with major-league clubs as soon as next week.
— Ken Rosenthal (@Ken_Rosenthal) December 1, 2017
Japanese star pitcher Yu Darvish, formerly of the Dodgers, is currently a free agent and has expressed interest in re-signing with the Dodgers, although many other teams have also shown interest in re-signing him. Teams may draw back that interest if it affects their chances of signing Ohtani though, so how this all plays out in the next few weeks should be fun to see.
