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The current baseball free-agent market is stocked with quality starting pitchers. Yet it’s a starter who can’t pitch until 2025 that could sign the largest contract in baseball history. Shohei Ohtani, 29, spent the six seasons leading into free agency with the Angels, establishing himself as perhaps the best hitter in the major leagues and one of the best pitchers. So even though recovery from surgery to repair a torn UCL in his right elbow will restrict him to designated hitter duties in 2024, Ohtani is projected to come away with a contract worth in excess of $500 million over 10 to 12 years. No other free agent this offseason will come anywhere close to that number, although the next-most lucrative contract could also be a player from Japan: right-handed starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Star...

Nov. 7, 2023 2 AM PT ABOARD THE OCEAN WARRIOR ON THE SOUTH ATLANTIC —  On the high seas roughly a thousand miles north of the Falkland Islands, an 18-year-old Chinese deckhand working on a Chinese squid ship nervously ducked into a dark hallway to whisper his plea for help.“Our passports were taken,” he said to the reporters who had just come aboard. “They won’t give them back.”Fearing he would be overheard, he typed out a message on his cellphone: “Can you take us to the embassy in Argentina?”Few workplaces are as brutal as distant-water fishing ships from China, and there are a lot of them: The nation today operates the world’s largest fleet, which is more than double the size of its next competitor. It’s rarely easy for crew members to leave these ships, and often it’s forbidden. Work...