Earlier this year, a National League general manager tasked a few trusted employees with a secret mission: Find out everything you can about Shohei Otani. One of the employees came back a few days later with some sparse details but a useful nugget of information: If Otani really does bring his 102-mph fastball and powerful bat to Major League Baseball from Japan during the upcoming winter, he wants to play for a big-market team with a large Japanese population. A few days after that, another of the employees delivered what he thought was some solid dope: When Otani does reach the major leagues, he really would love to head to a small market, blend in and avoid any more distractions than the ones inherent in his arrival.

The GM laughed. He doesn’t know if it’s intentional subterfuge, tongue-in-cheek trolling or out-of-the-loop sources trying to pass themselves off as in-the-know insiders, but his experience with Otani matches that of four other GMs who spoke with Yahoo Sports about the 22-year-old and said variations of the same thing: They have absolutely no idea what’s going on with him.

One scout is convinced the Texas Rangers are the favorites for Otani. Another GM believes the same – though he heard Otani might prefer the Los Angeles Dodgers. And then there are the San Diego Padres, who have a partnership with Otani’s Japanese team and hired a former strength coach of his in a prominent role. Don’t forget the New York Yankees and Chicago Cubs and San Francisco Giants and Houston Astros and others lurking, waiting, wondering whether their recon might be the difference between landing Otani and losing him.

That Otani is shrouded in mystery is only appropriate, seeing as his legend has grown to proportions in which even myths wouldn’t dare traffic. The fastball. The home runs. The legitimate possibility of a two-way player better than anyone since the person to whom Otani is most often compared – only Babe Ruth, the greatest baseball player ever. All of it creates this mania through which teams try to sift and find the truth.

Each wants to answer the same three questions. First: Is Otani coming to MLB after the 2017 season? On this, there is significant skepticism, and it stems from a second question, which might be even more important than the first.

Is Shohei Otani really willing to give up $200 million?

To understand how that’s possible, flash back to the winter, when MLB was negotiating a new collective-bargaining agreement with the MLB Players Association. Teams wanted to rein in spending, particularly on Cuban players, on whom they had lavished more than $800 million guaranteed over the previous decade. Much of the union’s rank-and-file, it turned out, was similarly chapped over the money handed to Cubans, a curious position but one staked nonetheless.

The compromise overhauled the international system, not only placing a hard cap on teams’ abilities to spend but neutering the market for young, international talent. In the past, international spending limits vanished once a player reached 23 years old. The new basic agreement bumped that to 25 – and, in the process, left Otani facing one whopper of a choice: Does he come to MLB after the 2017 or ’18 seasons and subject himself to a maximum signing bonus of $10.1 million, or does he wait until his 25th birthday in 2019, try to win another championship or two with the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters and come stateside with unlimited earning potential?

The general consensus among the GMs pegged market value for a 23-year-old starting pitcher with an elite fastball and elite splitter, plus a curveball and a slider that flash great now and again, and, oh, by the way, a bat that OPS’d over 1.000 last season, at $200 million minimum. Provided he stays healthy – Otani has yet to pitch this year because of a lingering hamstring injury, and missed the World Baseball Classic because of ankle issues – he’d get the same after 2019, maybe even more, with the free-agent market about to get juiced by the historic Class of 2018.

Arbitrary caps happen to encumber him now, in potentially laughable ways. The Dodgers, Padres, Astros, Cubs and Giants are among 11 teams limited this year to spending a maximum of $300,000 on an international player as a penalty for breaking previous thresholds. So if Otani, one of the best players in the world, decides he wants to play for, say, the Dodgers, not only would his signing bonus cap at $300,000, he would enter into baseball’s salary system like a rookie, meaning he would make about $550,000 for each of his first three seasons, then be subjected to three more in the restrictive arbitration system, before he reached true free agency.

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