Tag Archives: MLB

4 years after shafting NPB, MLB ready for another posting system plunge

OK. So while we’ve all expected Shohei Otani to move to the majors at the end of this year, Major League Baseball may be in the process of wrecking that prospect.

Four years after MLB last took Nippon Professional Baseball teams to the cleaners ahead of Masahiro Tanaka’s posting, MLB is looking to renegotiate its sweetheart posting deal with NPB, a source told Kyodo News this week.

In the winter of 2013, just days prior to the anticipated posting of Tanaka, currently the ace of the New York Yankees, the Rakuten Eagles’ expected posting wind fall went from a possible $100 million to $20 million as the Yomiuri Giants and SoftBank Hawks pressured other NPB clubs to agree to a new deal that was friendlier to MLB. And now MLB is at it again.

Small-market MLB teams had been unhappy with the pre-2013 deal that saw the winners of closed bids pay in the area of $50 million for the exclusive negotiating rights to Daisuke Matsuzaka and Yu Darvish. Because money paid to NPB teams in posting fees don’t count against MLB’s luxury tax, it was a tax dodge for clubs willing to break the bank for overseas talent.




The current system allows every team to negotiate with a posted player provided it is willing to pay the posting fee demanded by his NPB team up to a maximum of $20 million. This drives down the amount that rich clubs can shelter from the luxury tax but does nothing to make high-value foreign talent more accessible to small-market teams since posted players are now able to sign with the highest bidder.

Four years after the Giants and Hawks conspired with MLB to get NPB to agree to a lousy posting system for Japan’s other teams, they can again be counted on to ram another lousy deal down their fellow owners’ throats just in time, perhaps, to prevent the most interesting baseball player in the world, Otani, from leaving NPB.

MLB’s new collective bargaining agreement prevents a bidding war this year for the 23-year-old slugging ace pitcher by treating him as an amateur until he’s 25. Otani is still in Japan as arguably the country’s best pitcher and its best hitter BECAUSE the Nippon Ham Fighters agreed to post him when he is ready. Manager Hideki Kuriyama told a press conference in Tokyo last winter that his plan was to give Otani a shortcut to the majors.

At last year’s winter meetings outside Washington, an MLB executive said that while Cuban pros rather than Otani were the reason for the new CBA. The CBA reduces his posting payday from somewhere in the $200 million-to-$300 million range to something in the area of a maximum of $10.5 million.




Otani had wanted to sign directly with a major league team as an amateur, but didn’t, and one gets the impression that MLB is not happy about that. By closing the opportunity of teams like Nippon Ham to offer another superstar a similar shortcut, MLB is hoping that more amateurs skip NPB altogether, sign for small amounts on standard seven-year minor league deals — and demolishing the posting system is one way toward that end.

Of course, since the advent of the new CBA, some American writers have speculated that an exemption might be in the works to ensure Otani comes, since MLB does want him to come, MLB might actually want to sweeten the posting fee for players it considers amateurs, although that seems highly unlikely.

MLB’s new CBA a blow to diversity, growth

Major League Baseball took a subtle step toward greater homogenzation in January, when it ratified a labor deal with its union that will lead to less experimentation and fodder for evolution. Aimed at robbing Cuban professionals of their bargaining power in the same way MLB robs homegrown amateurs of theirs, the new agreement will lead to a duller, less imaginative brand of baseball.

The agreement raises the age for foreign pros to be treated as anything but amateurs from 23 to 25, not a huge increase but one which could dissuade talented amateurs in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan from turning professional in their home countries and instead signing directly with MLB clubs.

This would allow MLB teams to scoop up more foreign talent at rock-bottom prices rather than paying out huge sums for professional free agents years down the line. Yet, some of the value overseas pros bring to MLB is not measurable in physical attributes alone but in having competed in a radically different environment, having developed different skill sets and going up against some elite professional opponents at a young age.

The blindingly obvious example is Shohei Otani, a name familiar to every top executive on every MLB team. The 23-year-old Otani was the most valuable player in Japan’s Pacific League this year, is Japan’s fastest pitcher while being one its elite hitters. His Japanese team, the Nippon Ham Fighters, will allow him to move to the majors in the autumn, but because MLB’s new labor deal defines Otani as an amateur, a player whose contract was expected to range from 200 to 300 million dollars, will be on the market for around $10 million.

While Japan’s two top leagues lack the talent depth of their U.S. counterparts, Otani is the first in Japanese pro history to hit 10 or more home runs in the same season in which he won 10 or more games, and has done it twice. The only other player to do that in a top-flight professional league was Babe Ruth – who then gave up pitching to concentrate on batting every day.

The right-handed throwing, left-handed hitting wunderkind will, as early as 2018, get a chance to see how well his talents play in the big leagues. Ironically, Otani had not planned on turning pro in Japan, and had to be convinced not to sign with an MLB club. But the Nippon Ham Fighters drafted him and manager Hideki Kuriyama convinced him that his club would allow him to both hit and pitch and by competing against Japan’s best at the age of 18, prepare him for the majors at an early age.

Although many former ballplayers in Japan scoffed at Otani wasting time on hitting when he should be honing his pitching skills, the youngster has shown an amazing ability to both develop his arsenal and velocity on the mound, while refining his swing and his batting approach. And like the old guys here, major league scouts are beginning to think his batting – Otani was voted his league’s best pitcher and designated hitter this year – could have value at the highest level. While the competition in Japan is different from the majors, Otani’s batting compares favorably with Hideki Matsui’s at the same age, while his pitching prowess has matched Yu Darvish’s.

We will never know good a pitcher Otani would be now if he had gone directly to the States as an 18-year-old, but we do know this: Had he signed with an MLB team out of high school, nobody would know he could hit, because no big league club would have permitted him to do both.

Otani is a better and more exciting player because he stayed in Japan, competing against NPB’s best and playing for a team and a manager who were willing to do things differently. If he does buck the odds and succeed in the big leagues on the mound and in the batter’s box – as only Babe Ruth has ever done – it may change baseball’s thinking about what a determined and talented player can accomplish and mean teams will no longer tell players it is impossible to both pitch and bat at a high level.

When Otani does move to the U.S., MLB will benefit from the lessons he learned in NPB. But by discouraging future amateurs from following Otani’s route and by having them skip the advanced skill lessons Japanese pro ball teaches and the U.S. minors don’t, the American game is narrowing an avenue for future growth and evolution and will be the poorer for it.