There may or may not be an agreement between Major League Baseball and NPB as far as a new posting system goes. A few days ago it was reported that the two had reached an agreement, but were just waiting to sign the final deal. Berselius wrote about this potential deal a few days ago.
Anyway, the big issue is what will happen when the inevitable tied bid pops up. Japanese reports yesterday suggested that it would go to the team with the worst record the previous year, which ew. The LA Times's Bill Shaikin claims that the player could choose which of the teams to negotiate with. Given how the small market teams are the ones that pushed these changes to the posting fees to begin with, I'd be more inclined to believe that the new setup is the former, which is probably bad news for the Cubs.
My initial thought was, why wouldn't all 30 teams bid on the best players available? Take Masahiro Tanaka as an example. Under the old system, he was expected to get the highest bid any player has ever received. If the maximum bid is now $20 million, it's hard to imagine that all 30 teams would not place a maximum bid. This way, all the teams could sit at the table and negotiate with Masahiro Tanaka.
After all, Tanaka would not have to be worth much over $20 million to justify getting the maximum amount. $20.5 million to be exact. The $0.5 million being $500,000, which is the MLB league minimum salary.
This would essentialy make in a free agent. True, most of the teams would have no chance whatsoever to sign Tanaka. But why not place the maximum bed and take a chance? Perhaps Tanaka just wants to take his talents to South Beach. It's worth the maximum bid to find out.
This, of course, assumes that only the winning bid would have to pay the Japanese team. I cannot imagine the two leagues agreeing to any other system.
Furthermore, why would the Japanese team accept such a low figure? Surely Masahiro Tanaka has more value to the Japanese team than the $20 million they would get from a Major League Baseball team.I can't imagine a player of his talent not providing more than $20 million in surplus value.
MLB is apparently in the driver's seat here. They want to limit the amount of money that they give the Japanese team and probably pay no more in salary to the player then they happen. Instead, a system like this is likely to limit the amount of talent coming over from Japan and increase the amount of money the Japanese player would get if he does come here.
The small-market teams are fighting for this and if this is the system, they have screwed themselves. So has Major League Baseball.
Comments
They what now?
Suburban kidQuote Reply
Fixed. I’m using a dictation tool and can’t edit worth a shit. Wanna be my editor? (dying laughing)
dmick89Quote Reply
Only the winning bid will go to the team. The point of the posting system is to compensate the Japanese team. I don’t think it is intended to have US competitive balance implications.
The problem the new system addresses is that the total cost of importing players was higher than it will be under the new system and that the excess $ was a windfall to the Japanese team. The reason the Japanese teams agreed to it is because for NPB, the alternative is worse. MLB negotiated from a position where if they couldn’t reach an agreement, they could cease to honor the Japanese equivalent of the reserve clause. That would result in a net influx of Japanese players who would be essentially free agents and for whom the teams would receive no compensation. That wouldn’t have ever actually happened, but it was a nice thing to have in MLBs back pocket while negotiating the new system.
Some guyQuote Reply
@ Some guy:
I’m not sure how it would increase the number of players here. Tanaka is under contract and if his team does not post him, he cannot play anywhere else.
dmick89Quote Reply
@ Some guy:
@ dmick89:
I read somewhere that it’s a move NPB is considering to keep labor peace. Clubs currently have nine years of control, and the players over there are contemplating some sort of action to change that. Giving a bit on the posting system is looked at as one avenue of compromise by the owners that will let them keep the more onerous parts of the system intact (the majority of players will never be posted or try to play in other countries).
I don’t know enough about how things are over there to say whether or not that’s all serious, but just passing along what I’ve read.
uncle daveQuote Reply
Man Mizzou’s run defense was worse than the Bears. Maybe FSU and OSU will lose so we can get an Auburn ‘Bama rematch
WaLiQuote Reply
http://seattletimes.com/html/mariners/2022420240_mariners08xml.html
That article is making the rounds on the twitters. Pretty bad for the M’s if true.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
WaLi wrote:
Hope that holds up when they play Wisconsin in Jan
BerseliusQuote Reply
Rice Cube wrote:
That was a real world baseball soap opera I recently enjoyed.
Suburban kidQuote Reply
@ uncle dave:
That makes some sense, but I wonder how far a team is willing to go to take a loss in terms of surplus value. I wonder, could Tanaka’s team trade him to another NPB team and get more in return than what they’d get by posting? They could probably flat-out sell him to another team there and get more, but they could probably get considerably more in players.
There has really only been a few players where this has been an issue: Daisuke Matsuzaka, Yu Darvish and now Masahiro Tanaka. It could make sense financially for the teams to take a loss on them if it allows them to keep the peace. However, I think the players will see it as a small gesture because it affects almost no one.
What was the winning bid for Kosuke Fukudome?
dmick89Quote Reply
dmick89 wrote:
Or was there one?
dmick89Quote Reply
@ Rice Cube:
#6org
BerseliusQuote Reply
@ dmick89:
I believe Fukudome was a free agent.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
@ Rice Cube:
That’s what I was thinking immediately after I published that first comment. He got a pretty large deal for someone who was posted considering his talents compared to the others.
Any other Japanese players posted that got huge bids? I can’t think of any other than the three I mentioned.
dmick89Quote Reply
@ dmick89:
I thought Ichiro got posted. Apparently his posting bid was $13MM. I think Nomo did the retirement loophole thing so he wasn’t posted. There were some other random guys like Aoki and a couple Japanese shortstops but nowhere near as big as Ichiro.
Rice CubeQuote Reply
@ Rice Cube:
From what I can recall, there have only been three who have approached what would be the max bid. I doubt the NPB wanted to accept this, but for the reasons Dave stated, they probably agreed to it. Just not a big deal to them in the long run and more than likely, whatever grievances the players have there will get sorted out anyway. Probably won’t affect much of anything.
Does make it less likely Tanaka gets posted though, but at this point I have little reason to believe the Cubs would be interested. Probably bid something like $19 million to make it look good.
dmick89Quote Reply
new shit
dmick89Quote Reply
Having read this I believed it was extremely enlightening.
I appreciate you taking the time and effort to put this short article together.
I once again find myself spending way too much time both
reading and commenting. But so what, it was still worth it!
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