Shohei Ohtani to be made available to MLB teams, Nippon-Ham Fighters announce

It looks as if it’s only a matter of time that Shohei Ohtani completes his highly anticipated move to the major leagues.

Ohtani’s Japanese league team, the Nippon-Ham Fighters, announced Friday they would make the two-way star available to major league teams via the posting system, according to Japanese news reports. Earlier this week, Ohtani selected Nez Balelo of CAA Sports as his agent.

Only one major obstacle remains between Ohtani and his move to the United States: Nippon Professional Baseball, Major League Baseball and the Major League Baseball Players Assn. will have to agree on a new posting system — the regulations that govern the transfers of players from Japan to MLB. The most recent agreement expired last week.

“Once that is completed, he has every intention to come to the States this coming season,” one person familiar the situation said this week.

Ohtani, 23, has thrown fastballs clocked at 100-plus mph and hit balls that have traveled 500-plus feet. He was the Pacific League’s MVP in 2016, when he was 10-4 with a 1.86 earned-run average and batted .322 with 22 home runs.

Ohtani was sidelined for significant parts of this year with ankle and hamstring injuries. He underwent a minor ankle operation after the season.

“I believe he will become the best player in the world,” Fighters manager Hideki Kuriyama told reporters in Japan on Friday.

The Dodgers are expected to make a serious run at Ohtani. Andrew Friedman, the team’s president of baseball operations, sounded open to the idea of two-way player when he said this week, “We definitely think that it’s doable for someone who’s talented enough to do both.”

Ohtani could be costing himself hundreds of millions of dollars by moving to the major leagues this winter instead of two winters from now. Because he’s younger than 25, Ohtani will be treated as if he were an international amateur, meaning he would have to sign a standard minor league contract. The largest bonus he could receive would be somewhere between $3 million and $4 million. Many teams, including the Dodgers, would be able to offer him a bonus of only $300,000 as a penalty for spending beyond their designated limits on international amateurs in previous signing periods.

By waiting two years, the Nippon-Ham Fighters star would be free of any financial restrictions and some major league executives estimate he could sign for more than $200 million.

However, Ohtani is said to be ambivalent about money.