Ohtani requests résumés from his MLB suitors
Big bummer for the Yankees and their fellow Major League Baseball teams: They got Thanksgiving weekend homework.
In this instance, though, the extra credit is too hard to blow off.
An industry source confirmed that on Friday, all 30 clubs received a memo from the representative for Shohei Ohtani — authorized and distributed by the commissioner’s office — asking interested clubs to answer a flurry of questions that will help determine which MLB team Ohtani, the pitcheroutfielder for the Nippon Ham Fighters, will join.
The memo, released in the name of Nez Balelo, cohead of CAA Baseball and Ohtani’s lead agent, asks each suitor to evaluate Ohtani’s talent as a pitcher and as a hitter; to explain its player development, medical training and player-performance philosophies and facilities; to describe its minor league and spring training facilities; to detail resources for Ohtani’s cultural assimilation into the team’s city; to demonstrate a vision for how Ohtani could integrate into the team’s organization; and to tell Ohtani why the team is a desirable place to play.
The deadline? As soon as possible, as per the memo.
The Yankees, based on their history of landing Japanese players they have pursued, rank among the teams most likely to sign Ohtani, a list that also includes the Rangers, Dodgers and Mariners.
The Associated Press first reported of this unusual development, a strong indication that this coming Friday’s vote of club owners for the new posting agreement with Nippon Professional Baseball will go smoothly — thereby allowing Ohtani to be posted by the Fighters on either Friday or Saturday. Commissioner Rob Manfred would not have permitted this step, premature in the most literal sense, to be taken without such confidence.
Once he is posted, Ohtani will have 21 days to decide on his new employer. It’s that tight window, one designed to ensure that Ohtani and future posted stars don’t dramatically slow down the rest of the free-agent market, which prompted this move by CAA and Balelo.
In the memo, clubs were instructed not to include any financial terms in their responses, an edict that surely made this maneuver more palatable to Manfred and would seem futile, anyway. Because he is just 23 and therefore is limited to teams’ international bonus pools, Ohtani already knows how much each team can offer. The Yankees currently can max out at a $3.5 million signing bonus. Only the Rangers, at $5.535 million, can offer more.
Common sense says that Ohtani will use these memos to pare down his list of bidders. At that juncture, he could set up camp somewhere in the United States, following the model set by Masahiro Tanaka four years ago, and make the most serious clubs come to him and present their cases.
Before the verbal test, though, comes the written exam.