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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 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. Rintaro Sasaki, a first baseman who turned 19 in April, bypassed NPB's draft to play college ball for Stanford last season. Morii, a shortstop and right-handed pitcher, joined the A's directly from high school on the first day of the 2025 signing period.
