MLB Notebook: Ranking the Ohtani contenders; scouting reports on Sox players from Arizona Fall League and more

Now that Major League Baseball owners have voted unanimously to approve the new posting procedure for international free agents and Japanese pitcher/slugger Shohei Ohtani has been posted, the real suspense begins.

In less than three weeks, likely just before Christmas, Ohtani will sign with an MLB team.

In the lead-up to his posting, there have been countless theories about what’s important in Ohtani’s decision-making and what isn’t.

It’s been suggested that he wants to play in the American League, where he could regularly get at-bats between starts; it’s also been suggested that he would prefer to play in the National League, where he could hit in games he starts and play the outfield in other games.

Some have said he wants to go to a team that has a countryman already on the roster; some have suggested that he would prefer to be the only Japanese player on a club.

East Coast or West Coast? American League or National League? The truth is, no one knows for sure.

But assessing all the variables, here’s a list of potential landing spots for Ohtani, beginning with the most likely, and citing the perceived pluses and minuses of each team.

NEW YORK YANKEES

PLUSES: Storied franchise; housed in world’s largest city, affording innumerable marketing opportunities; perfect ballpark for lefthanded-hitter; competitive team; second-highest amount of money in international pool.

MINUSES: Ohtani hails from a rather rural area of Japan and may be put off by the size and pace of New York; if, indeed, he prefers not to join another countryman, the Yankees already have a Japanese star in their rotatation (Masahiro Tanaka).

LOS ANGELES DODGERS

PLUSES:  Have experience with Japanese pitchers (Hideo Nomo, Hiroki Kuroda; Kenta Maeda, Takashi Saito, Yu Darvish); L.A. offers plenty of promotional and marketing chances; Dodgers are defending N.L. champs and poised to compete for a near future; historically, the home of great pitchers (Koufax, Hershiser; Kershaw); significant Japanese population.

MINUSES: As a National League team, no DH opportunities; like New York, L.A. could be too big and glitzy for his tastes; Dodgers don’t have a lot of money left in bonus pool.

SEATTLE MARINERS

PLUSES: Seattle has a connection to the Pacific Rim, both culturally and geographically; Mariners have part Japanese ownership; M’s have history of iconic Japanese players (Ichiro Suzuki, Kazuhiro Sasaki); Safeco Field may be the best pitcher’s ballpark in the American League.

MINUSES: Mariners aren’t necessarily projected to be contenders in 2018; specter of past Japanese greats may prove daunting.

TEXAS RANGERS

PLUSES: Have the largest amount of international bonus money remaining at $3.5 million; accustomed to Japanese starters, with Yh Darvish, an idol of Ohtani’s, having spent most of six seasons there; have long history with Ohtani, having scouted him as an amateur five years ago.

MINUSES: The Metroplex is not known as a great marketing base; unseasonably warm summer weather may be unwelcome.

RED SOX

PLUSES: Have been through this drill before with Daisuke Matsuzaka; the Sox boast of a solid organizational infrastructure for Japanese players, with Japanese-trained staff members as well as a media relations employee to help ease the transition; tradition and history associated with franchise and Fenway; Boston’s reputation as a cosmopolitan city.

MINUSES: Modest international bonus pool amount ($440,000) ranking them near the middle-of-the-pack financially; relatively small Japanese population in greater Boston; East Coast base makes for longer trips home.

CHICAGO CUBS

PLUSES: Tradition and history of franchise and Wrigley Field; recent championship and bright prospects for future contention; creativity of Theo Epstein, who navigated a way to sign Matsuzaka in Boston.

MINUSES: Limited to the minimum amount of bonus pool money ($300,000); N.L. franchise restricts offensive opportunities.

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The Arizona Fall League concluded its scheduled two weeks ago. We spoke to a scout who watched a good chunk of the games and saw each team and asked for his evaluation of a handful of Red Sox players who took part.

(Henry Owens, who has some major league experience, was excluded since he’s more advanced and relatively well known).

Michael Chavis, INF (first-round, 2014): “He’s going to be a good player. He’s a driven kid. I’d leave him at third. I know they have (Rafael) Devers there, but what’s wrong with some competition? I’d try him at second base, too, and see what he could do there. I only saw him for a few games at first, but his reads were surprisingly good, so he must have been worked out there. He can hit a good major league-caliber fastball right now – that’s his calling card. He’s on a mission. He’s an athletic kid and he’ll do anything to help a club. l like his attitude. He could use a little work on his pitch recognition with secondary pitches, but that will come as he goes along.’’

Bobby Poyner, LHP (14th round, 2015): “He’s a bulldog lefty who might surface in the big leagues as a role guy. He doesn’t have a lot of margin for error with his stuff, but he could develop into a situational (lefty) if all else fails. He’s got some guile and a good feel for the game. Probably just an inventory guy in the long run, but could fit as an up-and-down guy in the bullpen.’’

Ty Buttrey, LHP (4th round, 2012): “He looked good. I liked his arm strength and his fastball is impressive. He would sit at 96-98 mph, but was up to 99 mph at times. I think starting for him may be too much of a challenge to repeat (his delivery) and command, but he could be a back-end reliever. He’s still got to refine his breaking ball. He did get a lot of swing-and-miss, and he likes to work fast, but sometimes, he’s got to control his adrenaline because that high velocity sometimes comes at the expense of good command.’’

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If you want to know, in a nutshell, how much the game of baseball has changed, consider this: both the New York Yankees and Red Sox, two of the marquee franchises in the game, both coming off winning seasons that saw them reach the postseason, will next year both employ rookie managers who have never managed a regular season game in their lives.

Alex Cora, the Red Sox rookie skipper, has at least managed in winter ball and has a year of coaching experience in the big leagues. That’s not much, but it’s more than Aaron Boone, who had never coached or managed at any level and last wore a uniform almost a decade ago.

It’s noteworthy that for both, most of their post-playing careers were spent in the media. Both Cora and Boone worked several seasons for ESPN, with Cora serving as a studio analyst for Baseball Tonight and ESPN Deportes, while Boone had the higher profile position of being an analyst on Sunday Night Baseball, the network’s highest-profile baseball telecast.

Undoubtedly, both will find that their experience in the media and ability to communicate – in Cora’s case, in two languages – will be great assets.

But both are stepping up in class in a big way, Boone in particular. New York can be unforgiving and anything less than a return trip to the ALCS – where his predecessor, Joe Girardi, last took the club – will be seen as a sign of underperformance.

Other franchises have taken these sorts of risks in the relatively recent past. The St. Louis Cardinals hired Mike Matheny with no previous managerial experience, and so did the Chicago White Sox when they hired Robin Ventura. But St. Louis and Chicago’s South Side are virtually small-market teams compared to New York and Boston.

Both Boone and Cora wowed their respective clubs with great interviews, perhaps owing to their media background and ability to communicate.

Here’s the oddity: with a mountain of data and analytics to sift through, baseball in some ways is more complex than ever. But the recent trend in hiring seems to virtually discount previous dugout experience. Indeed, it may even be something of a disadvantage, since management appears to prioritize open-mindedness and a willingness to collaborate far more than on-the-job learning.