The Nippon Ham Fighters met with representatives of the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association over the team’s disposal of three key players, outfielders Haruki Nishikawa and Taishi Ota, and reliever Ryo Akiyoshi, whom the Pacific League club released on the Dec. 1 deadline to tender contracts to reserved players.
Teams do this every year. It’s absolutely, 100 percent no big deal. The problem was not releasing them, but the words the Fighters chose to use.
The Fighters announced that the players had been non-tendered, a phrase never ever used in Japanese baseball circles. But the Fighters are kind of a weird team, and not just because manager Tsuyoshi Shinjo wears perfume and sports an earring. To each his own.
What I mean is that they are the first Japanese club to mimic MLB and use their leverage to get huge breaks on a stadium deal that includes property for future real estate development income.
Regarding their transaction language, JPBPA Secretary General Tadahito Mori said in December that the explanations given to the media and to the three players were inconsistent, and said the club had lowered the value of the three on the free market by making use of the alien phrase.
According to the team, the decision to release them on Dec. 1, which was the Fighters’ prerogative, was for the players’ benefit. All three were eligible to file for free agency, and by releasing them, teams interested in acquiring them would not be required to pony up money or players to Nippon Ham in free-agent compensation.
As a result of the meeting, the Fighters promised, to understand the sensitivities of the players by never using the phrase “non-tendered” again.
Honestly.
It’s like Rob Manfred and the MLBPA agreeing to solve service time manipulation through political correctness by saying teams would from now on refer to the practice as “supplementary minor league duty.”
