When we have outstanding young talents such as 20-year-old Lotte Marines right-hander Roki Sasaki, the youngest pitcher to throw a perfect game, Orix Buffaloes ace Yoshinobu Yamamoto, or Yakult Swallows third baseman Munetaka Murakami, who is shattering home run records at the age of 22, people in the States begin asking when they’re coming to MLB.
It’s not obvious in most cases.
Japanese players can’t just walk away until they have nine years of service time in Japan’s major leagues. Their Japanese teams can make them available through the posting system, but that is 100 percent up to the teams — unless the team has a contractual obligation to post the player.
This kind of agreement, unimaginable in MLB, is one of the little nuggets in Japan’s salary and contract structure.
It is highly likely that both Masahiro Tanaka and Shohei Ohtani turned pro only after signing a supplemental contract with their teams specifying the terms under which their teams were required to post them.
As for the latest crop, we can make a good guess about Sasaki: Like Ohtani, he’ll move when he feels it’s in his best interest since there is zero chance he signed with Lotte without a secret posting guarantee.
Last winter, Yamamoto told the media he had requested the Buffaloes post him. Such announcements have often been followed by the team acceding to that request the following winter—except in the case of the SoftBank Hawks, who have never done so.
On the other hand, Yamamoto won’t be 25, old enough for the big payday allowable to an international free agent according to MLB’s CBA, until after the 2023 season, so if Orix does give him the green light, that would likely be the time.
But as a fourth-round draft pick in 2017, it is highly unlikely that he could have a secret posting agreement deal with the Buffaloes in place, meaning that if they do let him go, it’s 100 percent their choice. Orix might go that way, but the team has not posted a player since they let Ichiro Suzuki walk 21 years ago, so who knows.
Murakami, who is currently on a trajectory to be Japan’s greatest home run hitter in history, has made no such request public. As a top draft pick might have a posting agreement with the Swallows, but we probably won’t know that unless he either says he’s not going or he waits until free agency. If he goes at the age of 25, after the 2025 season, we’ll know he had such an agreement in place.
