C. Trent Rosecrans

crosecrans@enquirer.com

The Reds are the only team in MLB who have never had a Japanese player

The team has added three positions for scouting Asia

Every other team in the NL Central has a player who played in Asia

The Cincinnati Reds are the only team in Major League Baseball to never have had a Japanese player on their team. That could change in the near future.

While Asia was deemed too expensive under previous general manager Walt Jocketty, Dick Williams has expanded the Reds’ scouting efforts to Asia, hiring Rob Fidler as the team’s Manager of Pacific Rim Scouting and Jamey Storvick as an area scout based in Taiwan. Storvick will also cover Korea and the team is in the process of hiring a scout in Japan.

“It's an area of the world that we haven't had the resources to be real active, but we're seeing enough opportunity and growth that we think we need to have a better handle on that market and we want to be there,” said Williams, who was named general manager after the 2015 season, but took over day-to-day responsibilities from Jocketty following the 2016 season. “We want to know those players better. This is an important new initiative for us.”

The new rules in the collective bargaining agreement make acquiring Asian players less expensive, including a limit on the maximum posting fee to $20 million. That’s still a high price, but is one that makes every team a possible player in the most high-profile of players from Asia, especially Japan.

This doesn’t, of course, mean the Reds are planning on bidding for Japanese sensation Shohei Otani when he is posted — but it means it’s not out of the realm of possibility.

“You can always dream,” Williams joked when asked about Otani.

Nobody expected the Reds to be a player for Aroldis Chapman after he left Cuba, either. But the team had been scouting Cuba heavily and have since signed not only Chapman but also Raisel Iglesias, Vladimir Gutierrez and Alfredo Rodriguez.

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The Reds have had other players from other Asian countries, most recently Shin-Soo Choo of Korea, but Choo had been an established big-leaguer when the Reds traded for him.

Each of the team’s rivals in the National League Central has some connection to Asia — the Pirates have infielder Jung Ho Kang of Korea, the Cardinals' closer is Seung Hwan Oh of Korea and the Cubs have Japanese reliever Koji Uehara. While the Brewers don’t have a player born in Asia, they did sign first baseman Eric Thames to a three-year, $16 million contract after playing three years for the NC Dinos in Korea.

“The fact that more and more players are coming out of there, those players are getting traded,” Williams said. “It's better to have a familiarity with them, there are more players trying to come out at younger ages. The prices are dropping on some of the players, you're not seeing the crazy-high posting fees and all that anymore. We just want to be more involved in that market.”

Fidler, who speaks Japanese, will be based in Seattle. He was hired from the Cardinals, where he had been an area scout and also worked on the team’s international efforts.

At some point in the coming season, some of the team’s senior members of the scouting department, like Cam Bonifay and Terry Reynolds, will go to Asia to see players in person, said Nick Krall, an assistant general manager.

Krall and Eric Lee, the director of baseball operations, had spent more than two years looking into the possibilities of expanding the team’s reach into Asia before Williams hired Fidler and Storvick.

The team had been paying attention to the Asian market, but doing it mostly online, using video and analytics in addition to a scouting service that caters to multiple teams. Now they will have their own proprietary scouting information that can help not just in signing players directly from Asia, but also aid the team in trades that involve players from Asia because of the initial scouting information that often comes from amateur scouting and minor-league scouting information.

“If we make a decision, we want to make a thorough decision in everything we do,” Krall said. “There's a lot of different stuff you can do in conjunction with Japanese baseball that we feel we can make better decisions now other than just having a random guy over there to waste money.”