When the New York Mets withdrew their offer for Vanderbilt University pitcher Kumar Rocker, their first pick in this year’s June draft, there was speculation he might sign in Japan, following in the footsteps of Carter Stewart Jr., who is also represented by Scott Boras.
In some ways, their cases are similar, Stewart was the eighth overall pick in the 2018 draft, and declined a reduced offer from the Atlanta Braves after they brought up a wrist injury the pitcher said he’d suffered years ago while skateboarding.
Rocker was the 10th pick overall, and the Mets pulled their offer to him after reviewing his medical information. Rocker, ostensibly, is not headed back to school, thus the speculation about Japan.
Japan would make a ton of sense, but it’s still a long shot despite Boras’ presence.
Scott Boras
Boras is a big player, who is on a mission not only to raise the bar for all players in the labor market but also make MLB bigger and better. And while Japan has been a good market for a number of his lower-profile clients prior to Stewart, and he sees it as a profitable source of big-name future clients, sending a marquee amateur to Japan goes against his grain.
Boras may tout Stewart’s deal with the Hawks, reported to be $7 million over six years, but that’s just Boras putting a good spin on a deal that he wanted no part of.
The SoftBank Hawks and Stewart came together by coincidence, through the pitcher’s acquaintance with Hawks scout Matt Skrmetta. When the Hawks came to Stewart and his family with an offer, Boras, according to two sources, tried to talk them out of it.
One source said Boras only reluctantly agreed to the deal after the family discussed dumping him for another agency, CAA.
So while Boras may HINT about Rocker going to Japan, it’s also important to understand that the agent’s agenda is more about reforming MLB. Sending another guy to Japan is at best, Plan B.
Japan: land of opportunity and bottlenecks
While Japanese baseball represents a huge potential opportunity for American amateurs, the operative word is “potential.”
I wrote about this at some length in Winds of change.
Nippon Professional Baseball has guidelines regarding amateur signing bonuses and first contracts — but these only apply to amateur players in Japan and Japanese citizens who have never played in NPB. Other players are simply international talent, free to be signed by any team at any price.
The bottleneck has to do with NPB prohibiting teams from activating more than four imports at any one time, and teams’ poor developmental infrastructure. About half the teams aren’t run to make profits from their baseball — who said NPB and MLB are different? — but are considered an advertising expense for the parent company.
For that reason, most have zero interest in investing big money upfront in the hopes a young overseas amateur can figure out the things all Japanese kids know coming in after a life spent playing ball here.
I’d be surprised if the Hawks and the Yomiuri Giants haven’t at least done their homework on Rocker, and if they did, we should know soon enough.
Japan’s non-waiver acquisition deadline, normally July 31, is — because of the Olympic break — pushed back this year to Aug. 31, which would give Rocker a full year of international service time for the cost of a couple of months of his time.
So stay tuned.
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