Twenty-four hours after throwing 96 pitches to shove the World Series to a seventh game, the Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto ran in from the bullpen to this: ninth inning, one out, winning run at second base.
It was a legend-making moment.
Halfway around the world, Tora Otsuka chuckled.
In 2023, his first season as a Japan-based scout for the Phillies, Otsuka hosted three team officials, including assistant general manager Jorge Velandia, on a scouting visit. Among their stops: Chiba, a short drive from Tokyo, to watch Yamamoto pitch for the Orix Buffaloes.
“He threw a no-hitter in that game,” Otsuka said this week, laughing into the phone from Japan. “We had all our people watching this one game, and he threw a no-hitter. Only special players do that, you know? I feel like some players have ‘it.’ He’s one of those guys that has ‘it.’”
Otsuka laughed some more.
“When I saw that,” he continued, “I was like, ‘Yeah, I know he will do good in the States.’”
Just not for the Phillies.
Oh, they tried. The Phillies took a Bryce Harper-size swing at signing Yamamoto two years ago. They flew a seven-person delegation to Southern California to meet him and make a $300 million guarantee, plus add-ons that boosted the offer to more than $325 million, multiple sources said at the time.
But the Phillies have never signed a player out of Japan to a major league contract.
And Yamamoto wasn’t interested in being the first.
It’s a common sentiment. When Shohei Ohtani was courted by teams in 2017, he famously told MLB.com that he wanted to snap a selfie with the Rocky statue but didn’t want to play here. Last year, right-handed phenom Roki Sasaki wouldn’t even meet with the Phillies, a snub that owner John Middleton described as “hugely disappointing.”
And with a trio of Japanese stars available this offseason — right-hander Tatsuya Imai entered the posting system this week, joining slugging infielders Munetaka Murakami and Kazuma Okamoto — the Phillies are at a disadvantage relative to teams that have been active in Japan over the years, notably the Dodgers but also the Mets, Yankees, Cubs, Mariners, and Red Sox.
“Well, you still compete,” Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said. “Sometimes there’s a little bit more of an obstacle we’re facing. Maybe [Philly] is not the No. 1 place, first and foremost. But you don’t give in to that. You try to create an atmosphere that people want to join, and you’re hopeful that at some time it works out for you.“
Dombrowski maintains that the Phillies have made inroads, even though it’s difficult to see. They employ two full-time scouts in Japan now after years with one or none. Otsuka, the son of former major league pitcher Akinori Otsuka, is based near Tokyo; Koji Takahashi, hired away from the Twins, lives 300 miles to the southwest in Osaka.
With Otsuka and Takahashi building connections on the ground, at the amateur level and especially within Nippon Professional Baseball, the Phillies believe they’re better positioned to attract players.
But when?
“I feel like it’s going to happen sooner or later for the Phillies,” Otsuka said. “Timing-wise, it just hasn’t happened yet. We’re very close, I would say.”
Playing catch up
It all started with “Nomomania.”
Hideo Nomo signed with the Dodgers in 1995, bringing a distinctive pitching style that translated into major league success. Since then, 72 players have gone from NPB to MLB, with seven teams (Mets, Dodgers, Mariners, Red Sox, Cubs, Yankees, and Rangers) accounting for more than half those deals.
Conversely, the Phillies, Rockies, Astros, and Marlins have been shut out. (Second baseman Tadahito Iguchi and outfielder So Taguchi played for the Phillies. But Iguchi was traded over from the White Sox in 2007, and Taguchi signed as a free agent a few months later after six seasons with the Cardinals.)
The Phillies fell behind other teams in scouting Japan. After getting hired in December 2020, Dombrowski felt that he lacked adequate information about available Japanese players. He appointed Velandia to lead international scouting, with a directive to “build a better infrastructure in how we approach the Far East.”
Velandia tasked scouting director Derrick Chung with interviewing talent evaluators. Chung, who joined the Phillies in 2017 as an interpreter for South Korean outfielder Hyun Soo Kim before moving into scouting, recommended Takahashi.
Otsuka was clinging to hopes of playing professionally in Japan when Chung met him at a tryout for an independent league team. A former outfielder for the University of San Diego, Otsuka impressed Chung with his knowledge of the game and fluency in both Japanese and English.
After a formal interview process, the Phillies hired Otsuka, now 27, as a full-time scout.
Velandia and Chung each make two or three trips per year to Japan. The Phillies send their special assignment scouts, too. Otsuka said this was a “very busy year, with scouts coming in and out” to watch Imai, Murakami, and others in “a very, very solid class of guys.”
“The stuff we were doing three years ago and now, I’d say we have gotten better just understanding more about the market,” Otsuka said. “We’re more dialed in now compared to maybe before. We send scouts all the time to come to Japan. Just the process of everything has gotten smoother and smoother as the years have gone by.”
Otsuka claims that the Phillies’ brand recognition has improved in Japan, too. Amid four consecutive playoff appearances, and with popular stars such as Harper and Kyle Schwarber, the Phillies are often featured on television in Japan.
They aren’t the Dodgers, of course. For 30 years, from Nomo through pitchers Kazuhisa Ishii, Takashi Saito, Hiroki Kuroda, Yu Darvish, and Kenta Maeda, Japanese baseball culture has extended to Los Angeles. And after signing Ohtani, Yamamoto, and Sasaki in the last two years, the Dodgers might as well be Japan’s national team.
The connection extends to the players. Yamamoto cited a desire to play with Ohtani as a reason for choosing the Dodgers’ $325 million over similar offers from the Mets, Yankees, and Phillies. Sasaki made no secret that he wanted to be alongside Ohtani and Yamamoto.
And social media was buzzing this week over a photo of Murakami, who holds Japan’s single-season record with 56 home runs, dining with Yamamoto.
“There is the difficulty of we have not had a player straight from Japan,” Otsuka said. “Players do talk with each other, saying what is a good organization, what is not a good organization. It would be nice to have one player be signed from Japan who plays in the big leagues to have more viewership from the Japan side for the Phillies.”
For a brief time last winter, Otsuka thought he might have found that player.
Chicken-or-egg situation
Koyo Aoyagi was a three-time all-star in nine NPB seasons. He won a gold medal in the 2020 Olympics. Three years later, he started Game 7 of the Japan Series and spun 4⅔ scoreless innings for the champion Hanshin Tigers.
But his dream was to play in the majors.
At 31, coming off a 2024 season that he said didn’t meet his standards, Aoyagi signed a minor-league contract with the Phillies. The side-arming reliever attended major league camp but agreed to go to triple A.
Upon arriving in spring training — his first visit to the United States — Aoyagi said through an interpreter that he “wasn’t too aware” of the Phillies’ inability to break through in Japan. But he also acknowledged that “me pitching on the big-league mound will definitely bring some attention to the Phillies that would be able to recruit Japanese players more.”
It was a low-risk, high-reward union of player and team.
And it didn’t work out.
Aoyagi struggled to throw strikes all spring, and it carried into the season. He had a 7.45 ERA with 23 walks in 19⅓ innings in triple A. After getting demoted to double A, he posted a 6.91 ERA and 15 walks in 14⅓ innings. The Phillies released him in July.
But Otsuka, who recommended that the Phillies take a flier on Aoyagi, stands by the team’s process. He also believes in what Aoyagi represented.
“Even though he didn’t make it to the big leagues, just him being on the team [in spring training], that still brought some attention in Japan,” Otsuka said. “I see a lot more Phillies hats walking around town. That’s all I can say. And I hear a lot of people talking about the Phillies just being a really good, strong team.”
Maybe. But the Aoyagi experience re-raised a chicken-or-egg conundrum: Do the Phillies have to gain more traction in Japan in order to attract an impact player? Or must they sign a Japanese player to a major league contract in order to really penetrate the Far East market?
“I really can’t honestly answer that,“ Dombrowski said. ”Because I don’t know.”
The answer might not be found in this year’s class.
Murakami, 26, has prodigious left-handed power but also strikes out a lot and is a poor defender at third base. Okamoto, 30, is a right-handed hitter with less upside than Murakami who also profiles best at first base.
Imai, 28, draws intriguing comparisons to Yamamoto. The Phillies aren’t prioritizing the rotation. But that was the case in each of the last two offseasons, and they made a mega offer to Yamamoto and discussed trading for Garrett Crochet before acquiring Jesús Luzardo.
“When most teams talk to me about Imai, they say, ‘Oh my,’” agent Scott Boras said at the recent GM meetings. “He’s that kind of guy. … He loves big markets. We go through a list of places he may want to play, and, believe me, he is someone who wants to be on a winning team and compete at the highest level.”
But whether it’s now or in the future, the Phillies’ biggest challenge in mining talent from Japan is selling players on Philadelphia.
Velandia said the pitch highlights the city’s restaurants, doctors, and other resources that would make a Japanese player feel comfortable. Otsuka likes to emphasize the area’s golf courses, such as Pine Valley and Merion East.
The fact is, though, Philadelphia has a smaller Japanese population than many other major league cities. As one team official said, it makes sense that a Japanese player coming to the U.S. would be drawn to L.A. or New York, just as an American soccer player going to Spain would focus on Barcelona or Madrid.
“We just spit out all the good things about Philly,” Otsuka said. “We give the most information about Philadelphia, where it is as a city, what it’s like to play for the Phillies. It’s not like the worst sell ever. It has its difficulties, but it’s good. We can make it work.”
It might take a trail blazer, a player who wants to forge his own path. Otsuka intends to find him.
“That’s actually one of those selling points, that you could be ‘The Guy,’” Otsuka said. “You can be the first. When they think about Phillie Japanese players, you could be that player. Definitely the right player’s out there, the player that we want to go after.
“When the time’s right, it’s going to happen. It’s just a matter of time. We have the right processes. We’re doing everything possible now. I think we have all the necessary resources now to actually make it happen. I’m not frustrated about it. I’m just patiently waiting.”
