This story was excerpted from Martín Gallegos’ A’s Beat newsletter, with this edition handled by MLB Pipeline's Jesse Borek. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
Roki Sasaki wasn’t the only blockbuster international signing from Japan to happen during the first week of the 2025 period being open. When the A’s landed 18-year-old Shotaro Morii last Wednesday, it was a landmark deal: Not only is Morii a two-way phenom, he received the largest bonus ever handed out to an amateur from his country, according to Yakyu Cosmopolitan.
And yes, the Athletics are sending Morii out as a legitimate two-way player.
While the majority of international scouts have higher belief in Morii’s long-term offensive prowess (he homered 45 times during his high school career), the tantalizing upside on the hill is undeniable.
“There’s a lot more left in the tank on the mound,” said Steve Sharpe, the A’s director of international scouting. “I think it'd be a mistake to just do the old school, ‘Well, let's let him hit first and find out where the arm's at.’ But it could be super special on both ends.
“He's already touching 95 [mph], so it's like, man, we've got to try both – and he's up for it. He's an amazing athlete, so I think we can navigate. It's gonna take a lot of work from the coaching staff and the medical staff and strength staff, they're gonna have to really get creative. But we're pretty pumped up.”
By the looks of things, Morii is pumped up too. Right after the pageantry that came with putting pen to paper last Wednesday, Morii was back out on the diamond getting a workout in.
A left-handed hitter, Morii established himself on the Japanese prep scene as a potential Top 10 pick in the upcoming NPB Draft. In that regard, he’s more advanced than his cohorts in the A’s 2025 international signing class; he’ll get his pro career underway in the Arizona Complex League this summer, though how the club manages him playing shortstop (or even potentially third base) and pitching remains to be seen. Having a player so immensely talented is a good problem to have.
In addition to the attributes that pop, Morii excites evaluators due to his relatively light usage on the mound. He’s only been pitching with regularity for around the past 18 months, giving him something of a fresh arm as he enters the organization.
Equipped with a fastball that sits traditionally around 92-93 mph, but has been known to pop as high as 95, he works off that with a splitter that can feature some nasty movement when he gets enough velocity separation. Morii works with two distinct breaking balls -- a true 12-to-6 curveball and a tighter slider with solid bite and depth, although the latter could use some fine-tuning at this stage.
Morii comes from an athletic family, with his father having played college football in Japan. That he uses that all-around athleticism to his advantage on the basepaths, defensively at short and on the pitching rubber should come as no surprise.
“He moves with this graceful power,” Sharpe said. “He’s got all the upside, but then it comes with a ton of polish.”
The Athletics’ recruitment of Morii came with two-pronged difficulty: he could have followed in the footsteps of fellow countryman, Rintaro Sasaki, the nation’s all-time high school home run king, who went the college route (Stanford) and will first be MLB Draft-eligible come 2026; he also could have signed with 29 other big league organizations. But the A’s tying for the highest bonus pool slot ($7.56 million) in this year’s cycle allowed them flexibility in how to allocate those funds, while honing in on what they believed made Morii the prospect that he is.
“We knew Shotaro’s desire all along was to both pitch and hit,” said A’s assistant general manager Dan Feinstein last week. “The fact that we see him as a two-way prospect was definitely a selling point in our favor.”