Japanese pro baseball may or may not realize it, but NPB is currently at a crossroads in its dealing with MLB and should act now to fix a system that isn’t working as well as it should for Japanese teams.
Never has the MLB market for imported Japanese talent been so high as it was this offseason, with teams handing out big contracts to two players who moved via the posting system, a record $325 million deal for Yoshinobu Yamamoto and a contract to Shota Imanaga that could be worth $80 million.
The current posting agreement with MLB includes posting fees calculated on the total value of a player’s contract, but the use of options and opt outs have allowed MLB teams to defer paying what they owe since Yusei Kikuchi signed with the Seattle Mariners ahead of the 2019 season with player and team options after the third year.
Obviously that’s a problem. NPB teams have gone from huge windfalls, to $20 million windfalls, to a fraction of the amount the player is paid with opt outs making deferred payments interest-free loans from the players’ Japanese clubs.
“I tell them, every time you sit down in New York with these people (MLB), the big leagues benefit as a league, their clubs benefit, the Japanese players benefit, and you guys (NPB) just bend over and take it. It makes me so upset.”
— NPB team executive in December 2017.
With some MLB teams believing Lotte Marines right-hander Roki Sasaki will be available via the posting system 11 months from now, the interest shows no sign of slowing. Under the current posting rules and MLB’s collective bargaining agreement with its union, the Sasaki will be treated as an international amateur only eligible to enter MLB via a minor league contract with a signing bonus constrained by MLB’s signing bonus pools.
Because of that, there is little chance the Marines could recoup much more than $1 million in a transfer fee if they post him, so if Sasaki does go this year, regardless of the explanation Lotte gives for posting him, it will almost certainly be due to Sasaki having negotiated the right to be posted at a time of his choosing as a condition for his signing with Lotte as an amateur.
When players join teams as amateurs or free agents they have every right to negotiate whatever benefits they can. If Sasaki negotiated the right to be posted when he likes, that was his right, and come from the same set of rules NPB uses to limit first-year signing bonuses, ensure team control of individual players’ image right, and require nine years of service time for free agency give him that right.
As a fan of the teams and players who play here in Japan, I would be pleased as punch for Sasaki to turn into a monster pitcher for Lotte who can regularly throw 150-plus innings and strike out 200 batters a year. It would be glorious, but Sasaki exercising his rights might derail that.
NPB could, of course, change the rules to curtail what kind of side contracts amateurs could sign with their first teams, although that would require the agreement of its union under Japan’s labor law.
NPB could also change the terms of the posting agreement to give its team’s more for giving up their top players.
I would advocate for doing both.
In December 2016, MLB’s new CBA raised the age at which an international professional would be treated as a free agent from 23 to 25, instantly changing Shohei Ohtani from a big ticket item to a bargain-basement acquisition when he went on the market one year later.
That move came three years after MLB abolished the secret posting fee bidding it had used to assign negotiating rights to posted Japanese players that resulted in $51 million windfalls for the Seibu Lions and Nippon Ham Fighters, when ace pitchers Daisuke Matsuzaka left after 2006 and Yu Darvish left after 2011. The 2013 change set a maximum of $20 million but allowed players to negotiate with all 30 MLB teams, helping Masahiro Tanaka set a record first-year MLB contract of $155 million, while preventing the Rakuten Eagles from getting the $100 million posting fee we all expected to see.
At the 2017 winter meetings outside Washington, one Japanese team executive bemoaned the incompetence of NPB’s negotiators.
“I tell them, every time you sit down in New York with these people (MLB), the big leagues benefit as a league, their clubs benefit, the Japanese players benefit, and you guys (NPB) just bend over and take it,” he said. “It makes me so upset.”
The current posting system remains in force unless one side or the other gives notice by September that they intend to cancel it.
It’s time for NPB to be assertive for once and establish minimum posting fees, based on players’ current salaries, the way domestic free agent compensation is calculated.
To do that, NPB will need to pull out of the current agreement and renegotiate.
And while I have no problem with the rights that allow players to negotiate everything under the moon, NPB could, if it wanted, give the union something in exchange for limiting the kinds of post-upon-demand agreement in exchange for reducing the service time needed to file for free agency. The union wants to cut it from nine years to six, while increasing the service time given to players who are injured in play to beyond 90 days.
Of course, the teams could themselves change one rule of the current draft: the lack of compensation for teams failing to sign draft picks. Yomiuri has long prevented this since players occasionally only want to play for specific teams and won’t sign with others. Typically the Giants are one of those teams, so Yomiuri has opposed other clubs to getting compensation draft picks. If teams had compensation, it would be easier for them to poach would-be Giants – as the Fighters did with Hisayoshi Chono and Tomoyuki Sugano.
Japan needs the posting system, too, since increasing the access Japanese pros have to play in MLB has pushed individual players’ aspirations to new heights, to the benefit of Japanese fans. But there is no reason on earth for NPB to continue to let MLB dictate the terms of acquiring that talent.
But compensation picks would also decrease the leverage amateurs have in negotiations, since teams would have less to lose when players decline to sign.
So now that more and more MLB teams are counting down the days until the next NPB star is available through a system that MLB has manipulated to suit its own best interests, it is high time for Japanese teams to see that this cloud does indeed have a silver lining, if they want it to reach out and grab it.
