Major League Baseball's free-agent market is expanding this winter with the addition of one of Japan's biggest stars, Shohei Ohtani of the Nippon Ham Fighters.
MLB's agreement with Nippon Professional Baseball made this a bit tricky, as Japanese free agents can't simply decide to play in the United States without the cooperation of their teams through the posting system, which compensates the Japanese club financially for losing a topflight player to the majors. Under the terms of an arrangement between the two leagues, the Fighters will be grandfathered in under the old agreement instead of the new one, allowing them to pursue a cap of $20 million rather than the $150,000 they stood to make under the new posting system -- thus giving the team incentive to allow its 23-year-old star to move on.
So the largest roadblock to Ohtani coming over to the United States has been neatly obliterated. But just how good will Ohtani be in the big leagues? Translating a pitcher's performance from Japan to the majors is complicated; we know far better how good a Clayton Kershaw or a Max Scherzer is than a star Japanese pitcher.
The good news: We have about two decades' worth of data on players regularly coming back and forth from Japan. Obviously it's not as much information as we have about Triple-A players, but it's enough to estimate NPB's level of play as somewhere between Triple-A and The Show -- although a bit closer to Triple-A.
Ohtani has been a dominating player in Japan. In 82 starts (and three relief appearances), he has posted a 2.52 ERA in 543 innings -- with 624 strikeouts (10.3 per nine innings) and 200 walks (3.3 per nine innings). He's also allowed just 24 home runs (0.4 per nine) and a mere 384 hits, an impressive 6.4 per nine innings. In other words, Ohtani has the profile you'd expect from an accomplished young star with a triple-digit fastball. As a hitter, he has a career .286/.358/.500 slash line and has played a good deal of games in the outfield, so when we say he's a good-hitting pitcher, we don't mean it in the left-handed-compliment sense, as when we praise Madison Bumgarner's offense while implicitly noting that pitchers hit terribly. Ohtani is in actual good-hitter territory.
But let's get to those aforementioned translations (which I'll refer to as zMLE -- or ZiPS major league equivalency -- from now on).
That Ohtani is both a hitter and a pitcher leaves us a lot to digest. Complicating matters are two injuries that took a giant chunk out of his 2017 season: an ankle injury that removed him from the World Baseball Classic and a thigh injury that left him on the shelf for a few months. It would certainly be nice to have more than five starts from Ohtani in the year he hits MLB free agency.
Another important thing of note is the age column. These aren't the numbers of a player in his prime but of a player breaking into the majors. That adds a lot of context to his early offensive numbers, which came at an age when most MLB prospects are still in the minors. ZiPS takes this into account, so let's get to those juicy projections for the next six years, starting with his pitching.
The quantity isn't overwhelming; while there's a great deal of uncertainty with any pitcher's future, Ohtani is a young pitcher who has hit 150 innings just twice and is coming off a five-start season. (Any injury creates risk for a pitcher; it's only a matter of degree.) But quality-wise, that's a legit No. 2 starter in the majors or an ace who falls shy of the elite tier. As a pitcher, names that ZiPS compares Ohtani's performance to include Carlos Zambrano, Brandon Webb, Tim Hudson, Rich Harden, Darryl Kile, Jason Schmidt and Mark Gubicza, all pitchers who made real contributions in the majors.
Just as a pitcher, ZiPS projects Ohtani would land a $140 million contract over six years in the majors, including the posting fee that will surely hit $20 million. That's a lot of money, but other elite pitchers from Japan have gotten that amount: Masahiro Tanaka (more established but a bit older) landed a seven-year, $155 million deal before 2014 (plus the $20 million posting fee), and Yu Darvish got a five-year, $60 million contract before the 2012 season, but that's with a $51 million posting fee.
But what makes Ohtani double-plus intriguing is his bat. In non-DH leagues, the ability for a pitcher to passably hit can add a lot to career value. Red Ruffing, a .269/.306/.389, 81 OPS+ hitter in roughly 2,000 plate appearances, added 15 offensive Baseball-Reference WAR to his career value. (That's about a third of a Jim Rice career.) Wes Ferrell, a .280/.351/.446, 100 OPS+ hitter, added 12.8 bWAR in a shorter career.
To get an idea of what Ohtani's offensive value is in the most realistic upside scenario, I calculated his WAR as if he'd gotten two plate appearances in each of his projected starts as a pitcher, with the rest of the WAR considering him a right fielder. I also included his WAR as a right fielder without any plate appearances as a pitcher.
In this usage, with a team getting a league-average offensive contributor overall (a starting player is around 2 WAR), that projects to $91 million in salary if Ohtani had been a regular free agent, meaning that in the most optimistic -- but realistic -- scenario (it would be shocking if he got 600 plate appearances a year from even the most open-minded NL team), he would've been projected to clear $200 million in free agency. That's $210 million, mind you, from an NL team most willing to use his offensive talents.
The bad news for Ohtani (and good news for the teams that will fight for him) is that he isn't a free agent. MLB's two most recent collective bargaining agreements saw the players bargain away the negotiating rights of international free agents, essentially transferring money from Caribbean teenagers and players from Japan, Korea and Cuba into the pockets of baseball's already much-wealthier veterans. In the first version of the international signing cap, the cap was softer, meaning a team that wanted to blow through the caps for a coveted international player could do so, if it was willing to pay significant penalties. Ohtani is a player for whom many, if not most, teams would have happily obliterated that cap and faced the harsh penalties. But in the most recent CBA, that cap became much harder.
Entering MLB's system, in which Ohtani will need six years of service time to hit free agency and looks to get only three years of arbitration, ZiPS projects his actual salary for the next six years at $56 million. So Ohtani's giving up quite a lot of money to come to MLB before he can be a true free agent. One consolation: Given that Ohtani does have more leverage in negotiations than a typical international amateur (which is what he's treated as under the CBA), it seems extremely unlikely a team will play service-time games in order to squeeze out nearly seven full years of cost control. But don't expect a big compensatory contract for Ohtani all that soon. MLB will be watching like a hawk for any signs of under-the-table understandings.
Given the signing-bonus situation, a few teams have a leg up in signing Ohtani. The Rangers, Twins and Yankees all have a little more than $3 million remaining, which at least gives Ohtani some compensation for the immense amount of risk he's taking. Only three other teams (the Pirates, Marlins and Mariners) can offer him as much as $1 million. And if he really wants to be an Indian, Cleveland can offer him just $10,000.
Wherever he ends up, this year's hot stove just had a huge log thrown on the fire with the prospect of one of the most fascinating players in the world coming over for the 2018 season. Whether the Japanese Babe Ruth becomes an American Babe Ruth, Wes Ferrell or Brooks Kieschnick remains to be seen.