Transcendent talent and undeniable star Shohei Ohtani of Japan’s professional baseball team is reportedly bringing his skill to the MLB this coming season.

There has been hype surrounding Ohtani for the past few years due to his rare ability, which makes him invaluable. Ohtani is not only a fantastic pitcher, but an award-winning slugger as well.

In the MLB, teams are always looking for more pitching depth as a first-priority or stepping stone to success. The major downfall with pitchers, for the most part, is that they can’t put up remarkable hitting numbers like normal position players do on a daily basis.

Especially in the National League, the 9th hole in the batting order is almost always occupied by the pitcher because that’s typically a spot where a team has the worst chance to score runs.

A player like Ohtani is a once-in-a-lifetime talent that very few teams have the pleasure of having on their roster. The 23-year-old has already had five years of professional baseball experience. Over the course of five seasons, Ohtani has posted an astounding 2.52 ERA, and has won 74 percent of his games in which he pitched. Ohtani also slugged 48 homers and 166 RBIs over the last five seasons, with a .280 average.

While those numbers may not stand out to the average viewer, any baseball fanatic knows that the numbers Ohtani has posted in both batting and pitching are unlike that of any other player in the MLB.

Largely regarded as the MLB’s best hitting pitcher, Madison Bumgarner of the San Francisco Giants hits five home runs a year and posts around a 180. batting average consistently. That’s the MLB’s BEST hitting pitcher. Now compare Bumgarner’s stats with the likes of Ohtani’s…this man is a special talent.

Obviously, with the unique skills of a player like Ohtani comes a large price tag. For entering in the MLB as a rookie, Ohtani is demanding at least 3.3 million dollars to even consider a team. To give a perspective on just how absurd that number is for a rookie, the average rookie contract in the MLB is around 450,000 dollars a year.

Ohtani knows that he can go wherever he wants. The list of teams who bidded for his talents has gone down to primarily four: Dodgers, Mariners, Angels, and Giants. All four teams are offering him at least 3 million dollars, while the other few teams that are technically in contention aren’t giving him anything close to that.

Ohtani ended up signing with the Los Angeles Angels on December 8, 2017.