A Dodgers delegation met with an 18-year-old at Yokohama High School on Saturday local time to spend hours courting a pitcher who can already throw 97.6 mph and is weighing whether to play professional baseball in Japan or pursue a U.S. path. Right-hander Shoki Oda met with vice president of player personnel Galen Carr, adviser Yogo Suzuki and scout Toru Sugiura at the school’s baseball grounds, part of a crowded recruiting sweepstakes that has turned a teenager’s decision into one of the more unusual storylines of the MLB offseason.
The Dodgers sent three representatives to meet with Oda at the school on Nov. 14 local time, according to DodgersBeat. Oda was accompanied by his mother and Yokohama High baseball coach Hiroaki Murata, per Heavy.com, which also confirmed the identities of the Dodgers’ three-man group. Accounts differ on how long the sit-down actually ran: DodgersBeat put the meeting at about two and a half hours, while Heavy.com reported it stretched beyond three hours.
A Fastball and Strikeout Numbers That Turned Heads
Oda struck out 395 batters in 303.2 innings pitched during his high school career, a workload cited by Dodgers Nation. The outlet also reported that Oda is meeting with 12 MLB teams, including the Dodgers, and that he is considering forgoing NPB entirely in favor of signing directly with a major league organization. The New York Post noted Oda is a teenage right-handed pitcher whose camp includes the same management company that handled Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s and Roki Sasaki’s moves to the majors, and that Oda has said Yamamoto is his favorite player.
Carr did not hold back in his assessment. He called Oda not just the best 18-year-old pitcher in the world but the most talented arm to come out of Japan since Sasaki, according to Heavy.com’s account of the visit. The same report said Carr compared Oda to Sasaki at the same stage of his high school career, a comparison DodgersBeat separately confirmed. The 6-foot-1 Oda has touched 97.6 mph.
A Crowded Field of Suitors
The Yomiuri Giants already made their play, selecting Oda with the No. 1 pick in the most recent NPB draft, Dodgers Nation reported. That gives the Giants negotiating rights and, according to Kyodo News, until the end of next March to sign him — but Oda is weighing whether to skip Japan’s pro league and head straight to the United States.
He is not limiting himself to one American suitor, either. According to news reports in Japan cited by Yahoo Sports, Oda has already met with the Yankees, Tigers, Rangers, Phillies, Mets, Cardinals and Blue Jays. Dodgers general manager Brandon Gomes told Yahoo Sports that the organization’s international scouts had been tracking Oda closely, saying, “I know our international guys have watched him closely ... But we think really highly of him.” Dodgers Nation separately reported that Oda has indicated he could attend college in the United States if he does not land with an MLB club, and DodgersBeat noted that as of the Yokohama visit, Oda had yet to announce a decision.
Oda’s approach fits a pattern scouts have been tracking for a couple of years now. FanGraphs has described a rising trend of elite Japanese amateurs choosing to play college ball in the U.S. or sign as international amateurs straight out of high school rather than enter NPB first, as detailed in a FanGraphs scouting update.
For now, the Dodgers remain what Yahoo Sports called industry-wide favorites to land Oda, even as 11 other front offices make their own cases. Whether that translates into a signing, a trip to an American college campus, or something else entirely is a decision Oda alone has yet to make public.
