Nolan McLean does not make decisions until he needs to.

McLean might have preferred basketball as a three-sport star at Garner High School in North Carolina. He had to ditch the sport at the next level, though, and went to Oklahoma State to play both football and baseball. He briefly served as the Cowboys’ backup quarterback in 2020 before, he says, discovering how much he truly loved baseball and “the constant chase” to improve in a sport that better lends itself to development.

But even as a one-sport player in 2022 for Oklahoma State, McLean refused to limit himself. By then, Shohei Ohtani had broken into MLB and was rewriting the rules of what baseball players can do. It caught McLean’s eye, and a rarely used path cracked open.

“I wanted to continue to be a kid as long as I can,” McLean said this week from Maimonides Park, home of the High-A Brooklyn Cyclones.