Shotaro Morii, 18-Year-Old 2-Way Player, Bypasses Japanese Baseball to Sign with Athletics

The Associated Press

11:14 JST, January 16, 2025

Hoping to become a two-way player in Major League Baseball just like Shohei Ohtani, 18-year-old Shotaro Morii made the rare decision to bypass Japanese professional baseball entirely and agreed Wednesday to a minor league contract with the Athletics that includes a signing bonus of $1,510,500.

Top Japanese players traditionally have signed first with Nippon Professional Baseball clubs and established their professional credentials before moving to MLB as free agents or through the MLB-NPB posting process. Morii, a shortstop and right-handed pitcher, joined the A’s directly from high school on the first day of the 2025 signing period.

“Keep following my dream to become a great player,” Morii said through a translator during a Zoom news conference, wearing a gold A’s jersey over a dress shirt, a green-and-gold club cap on his head. “I didn’t want to regret about my decision when I think about my whole life and whole career.”

Rintaro Sasaki, a first baseman who turned 19 in April, bypassed NPB’s draft to play college ball for Stanford last season.

“I wanted to join to the professional baseball environment as soon as I can,” Morii said.

A left-handed hitter, Morii said he has been a two-way player since he was eight. He hit 45 home runs in three seasons while also pitching at Tokyo’s TOHO Junior and Senior High School. He will start at the lowest minor league level in Mesa, Arizona, with the Arizona Complex League Athletics.

“He’s a very talented baseball player with enough athleticism and mobility to play both shortstop and pitch,” assistant general manager Dan Feinstein said. “But beyond his physical ability, the thing that jumped out at us the most is his passion for the game and his unwavering desire to be one of the next great players from Japan.”

Morii already was in the U.S. He will head home for a bit before reporting to the A’s in March.

Morii emphasized with teams he spoke with that he wanted to be a two-way player. His decision was yet another offseason move by the A’s, who left Oakland and intend to play three seasons in West Sacramento, California, before moving to a planned ballpark in Las Vegas.

Feinstein credited director of international scouting Steve Sharpe, Pacific Rim coordinator Adam Hislop and Japan scout Toshiyuki Tomizuka for helping reach the agreement.

“Tommy, our scout in Japan, was able to watch a lot of their practices, his high school’s practices and games last year, and then build a relationship with Shotaro and his family once MLB allowed us to do so,” Feinstein said. “We knew he had a strong desire to play in the States.”

Morii already has taken a summer class in English. Asked whether the success of Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Hideki Matsui, Yu Darvish and others in MLB helped him make his decision, Morii responded in English: “Yes, of course.”

Matsui, a three-time MVP of Japan’s Central League, played for Oakland in 2011.

“This team has history,” Morii said through the translator. “They explained to me a lot about how the organization is running.”

He doesn’t compare himself to Ohtani.

“Shohei is really a baseball player far away from me right now,” Morii said, adding a goal was “to get closer to him as soon as I can.”