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In their own ways, Masanori Murakami, Hideo Nomo and Hideki Irabu broke ground by leaving Japan to pitch in the United States. Shohei Otani wants to join the list of pioneering pitchers. A 6-foot-4, 18-year-old right-hander from Iwate Prefecture in northern Japan, Otani wants to become the first Japanese player to jump directly from high school to American baseball.

Several major league clubs are courting him, with the Los Angeles Dodgers, the Texas Rangers and the Boston Red Sox among the favorites to sign him because they have scouted him aggressively. In a widely watched news conference in Japan on Sunday, Otani made clear what has been rumored for months: that he wants to start his professional career in the United States. Otani made his announcement to dissuade Japanese professional teams from choosing him in the high school draft on Thursday. “Great players from every country go there,” Otani said on Sunday, according to. “I don’t want to lose to those players.”.

Several of the 12 Japanese professional clubs have indicated that they will not draft Otani. If no club picks him, Otani will be free to negotiate with any M.L.B. Otani has not played for a Japanese professional team, so any major league team that signs him will not have to pay a posting fee.

If a Japanese team drafts him, the club will be able to negotiate with him exclusively until March 31. There are no rules preventing a major league team from negotiating with Otani as well, but M.L.B. Has a gentlemen’s agreement with Nippon Professional Baseball to stand aside during the exclusive negotiating period.

Otani has attracted a lot of attention because of his fastball, which has hit 98 miles per hour, as well as a good breaking ball and splitter, according to one major league scout who travels often to Japan and has seen video of Otani. “He would project to a midrotation guy eventually in the States,” according to the scout, who did not want his team’s name used.

Ira Stevens, who runs ScoutDragon, a scouting service in Japan, goes a step further. He called Otani “the next potential Yu Darvish from Tohoku,” in northern Honshu. Otani, he said, is more of a “work in progress” than Darvish at the end of his high school career, has a live arm and might have some potential as a hitter because of his size. Advertisement The larger question, the scout said, is whether Otani can adjust not only to the faster pace of baseball in the United States, but to life overseas. His father said that he worried about his son’s ability to bridge the cultural divide and speak English. The Dodgers, the Rangers and the Red Sox all have experience working with Japanese players.

The track record for Japanese pitchers leapfrogging their own pro league, though, is not good. Makoto Suzuki, known as Mac, dropped out of high school and signed with the Seattle Mariners in 1993. After playing in the minor leagues for several years, he was traded to the Mets and then picked up by the Kansas City Royals. He later played for the Colorado Rockies, the Milwaukee Brewers, the Oakland Athletics and the Chicago Cubs and finished his career with a 16-31 record and a 5.72 E.R.A.