What did the Reds show Shohei Ohtani? They showed us.

ORLANDO, Fla. – In late September, Cincinnati Reds general manager Dick Williams was given a bit of information that would wind up consuming the next few months of his life. In a meeting in the GM suite at Great American Ball Park, Reds director of Pacific Rim scouting Rob Fidler told Williams that Japanese star Shohei Ohtani was going to make the jump to major-league baseball this offseason.

From that moment until when Ohtani signed with the Los Angeles Angels on Saturday, the Reds threw themselves headlong into the task of convincing the 23-year-old, two-way phenom to come to Cincinnati. By leaving Japan this winter – when he is still classified as an amateur by MLB – Ohtani had signaled that money was not a factor to him. It was too good an opportunity to ignore.

The Reds didn't sign Ohtani – they didn’t even make the first cut – but Williams wanted to show fans just how seriously the organization tried to woo him. For that reason, Williams agreed to show both The Enquirer and MLB.com the materials the team sent to Ohtani, under the condition that they not be described too specifically so as to not reveal proprietary information.

“We put a lot of time into it,” Williams said. “We kind of felt like we were doing this for the whole city. We really wanted nothing more than to shock the world.”

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The Enquirer saw the two main portions of the Reds’ presentation. The first was a 12-minute video that served as an introduction to Cincinnati, the Reds and their pitch. The second was a pitch book the size of a coffee table book and twice as thick, containing a media guide’s amount of information, conveyed in large, slick graphics, to convince Ohtani why Cincinnati was a fit.

The video

The video was delivered to Ohtani both in digital form – one version each in Japanese and English – and in a physical form resembling a music-playing greeting card the size of an iPad. It had Ohtani’s name in Japanese printed on the front, and when opened automatically played the Reds’ pitch video on an HD screen.

The video opened with a highlight of Carlton Fisk hitting his walk-off home run over the Reds in Game 6 of the 1975 World Series, but then showed Cesar Geronimo catching the final out in Game 7 to clinch the title for Cincinnati. It also contained highlights of Ohtani playing in Japan, as well as a clip of an interview he gave earlier in the season.

The video was intercut with straight-to-camera messages from Williams, manager Bryan Price, star first baseman Joey Votto and Hall of Fame shortstop Barry Larkin. Before each was introduced, two or three slides worth of information about each speaker was presented.

The messages emphasized the passion for and history of baseball in Cincinnati, the relative peacefulness of playing in a small-market city, and the history-making opportunity of being the franchise’s first Japanese player. The video also contained small but telling details that might resonate with Ohtani.

A narrator noted that the fireworks at Great American Ball Park can be heard from several “kilometers” away, instead of miles. On Votto’s introductory title card, it was clearly highlighted that the first baseman was under contract through 2024, so as to emphasize the stability of the organization Ohtani would be joining. Quite briefly, footage was shown of Babe Ruth, the two-way player to which Ohtani is constantly compared.

The video ended with a series of highlights – Ohtani’s final game in Japan, Pete Rose’s record-breaking 4,192nd hit, the final out of the 1990 World Series, and Jay Bruce’s division-clinching homer in 2010.

The video was put together by an outside firm hired by the Reds, and delivered to Ohtani at the earliest possible time. It was ready to go when, a week before Ohtani’s Japanese team posted him, interested teams were asked to fill out a questionnaire by Ohtani’s agent, Nez Balelo of CAA.

The book

The pitch book was ready nearly as quickly, but needed a few additions. Balelo had asked teams to provide scouting reports on his client so that Ohtani could get a sense of how teams viewed him, and the Reds farmed out those duties to Price, pitching coach Mack Jenkins and hitting coach Don Long.

Price turned in a detailed evaluation that took up two pages, surprising even Reds officials with its thoroughness. Long broke down steps Ohtani could take to improve at the plate, including using photos of him at the plate from recent game broadcasts on Japanese television.

The rest of the book was more or less completed already, containing flashy graphics that took up entire pages to emphasize a point. The organization sold its front-office stability, pointing out that both Williams and owner Bob Castellini are Cincinnati natives who are unlikely to go anywhere anytime soon. The Reds gave Ohtani an in-depth look at how their park would benefit him as a hitter, and outlined a schedule for both pitching and playing the outfield in spring training and the regular season. It also mentioned how much smaller the Red’s travel demands are compared to other teams.

Like the video, the book was presented both in Japanese and in English, as well as available to Ohtani in digital form. Unlike the video, it was created entirely by the front office, an effort headed by director of baseball operations Eric Lee, and designed by the organization’s in-house art department.

The Reds got it to Ohtani with a couple days of receiving Balelo’s questionnaire, and got the sense that some teams didn’t respond until Ohtani was officially posted on Dec. 1, several days later. They wanted to be in early.

“It was crazy,” Williams said. “We’d be emailing the presentation and they’d send it to me at 10 o’clock at night. I’d work on it for a couple hours and I’d send them comments at midnight. As it got closer and we knew we were going to have to send something, we really ramped it up.”

The letdown

The Reds couldn’t have anticipated how quickly the process would run its course. By Sunday, they were told they were out of the running. Williams initially refused to take no for an answer, which is why the Reds were perhaps the only team included in the first cuts that didn’t acknowledge as much that Sunday night.

“I didn’t want to go on record saying we were out, because I didn’t believe we should be at that point,” Williams said. “I wanted to try to get us a meeting. I wanted to be at the table, so I kept trying.”

Eventually, the Reds resigned themselves to the fact that three months of work had not paid off on their moonshot. Other than an appreciative message from Balelo about their presentation, they have no idea how much, if at all, Ohtani himself viewed. He can’t possibly have fully digested the presentations of all 27 teams who courted him in the mere days it took him to significantly narrow his list, Williams reasoned.

But Williams is proud of the case he made, and is sure the organization gave itself the best possible chance to land a unique star.

“There was a lot of disappointment on our part,” he said. “Those of us close to it that worked on it convinced ourselves that we had a very good case. We really wanted him to hear it and feel the same way we did.”