When records are set in baseball, they so often occur at the confluence of favorable circumstances, the right player in the right place at the right time.
Pitcher Carter Stewart may not have set any records last year, but by signing with the Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks instead of an MLB team, the 20-year-old made history as the first elite American amateur to sign his first pro baseball contract in Japan.
Stewart was the eighth player chosen among the 1,214 players selected in MLB's 2018 amateur draft, and only the most bizarre set of circumstances and the intervention of a neighbor changed his course and brought him to Japan.