Source: www.1500espn.com --- Friday, December 01, 2017
Major League Baseball announced Friday that all 30 league owners approved a posting system that will allow Japanese star Shohei Ohtani, the 23-year-old ace who can also handle a bat, to be posted. That ought to be the final hurdle before he can jump from the best league in Japan to play ball in the United States. This column won’t get into the technical details of the agreement. It’s more focused on the upcoming Ohtani sweepstakes. Despite what figures to be league-wide intrigue, Ohtani remains a somewhat mysterious figure. And yet, Friday’s agreement means that a capped bidding war is officially afoot, with a resolution expectation no later than Dec. 22. That figures to be quite an early Christmas present for the team that strikes a deal with Ohtani. He’s been dubbed Japan’s Babe Ruth, and I wish we could collectively back away from that comparison, since Ruth has basically attained mythical stature within the sport, and beginning an MLB career with that kind of pressure borne of expectation—well, that’s a tough ask. But here we are, the hype train has left the station and all eyes will be on whatever team gets to welcome him to Major League camp in mid-February. We opened a recent episode of our Twins-focused podcast with a bold declaration: “The five syllables that could change the future of the Twins: ‘ Sho-hei Oh-ta-ni .’” While we were joking about the firmness of our conviction that Ohtani will be the next great Twins sta ...
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