Rakuten President won’t post Masahiro Tanaka?

In Commentary And Analysis, News And Rumors by dmick8921 Comments

tanakaFollowing the announced agreement that the maximum bid for a posted Japanase player would be $20 million, it made it less likely that Masahiro Tanaka would be posted. According to this, the team president has said he will not be posted (h/t to RC). Rakuten was the lone NPB team to vote against the agreement and were said to be very angry at the other 11 teams. 

This is understandable. The posting fee for Tanaka was expected to exceed to $50 million, which is quite a large sum. Now, it will more than likely be the maximum $20 million. 

CJ Nitkowiski of mlb.com says Tanaka will undoubtedly be posted. His reasoning: that $20 million is more than $0. While that is of course true, I think Nitkowski is being too simple-minded about this. 

Masahiro Tanaka is the biggest start to potentially come from Japan yet, but he has two more years before he's eligible to. In the NPB, a player must have 9 years of service time before he's eligible for international free agency, but only 8 before he's a free agent. After 2014, Tanaka could sign with any of the NPB teams he wants to so Rakuten only has him for one more guaranteed year.

Still, one year for a player as good as Tanaka and paying him just $5 million is some bargain. I'm not the least bit knowledgeable about baseball in Japan, but surplus value is surplus value everywhere in the world. At Tanaka's salary, he offers a lot of surplus value.

Is it $20 million? I have no idea, but my guess would be that it is. I'd also venture a guess that the Rakuten owner could probably extend his contract for an additional year and make out even better. He could trade him to another Japanese team and get a ton of value back. 

Rakuten is not without options. They could extend him, much like the Cubs could Jeff Samardzija. They could trade him like they did Matt Garza and others. They could let him play and more than likely win a lot of games, which would obviously sell lots of tickets and merchandise. Or they could take the $20 million.

What option is best? I couldn't possibly tell you, but it's not as simple as $20 million vs. $0. It's more like $20 million vs. his surplus value. It's entirely that surplus value exceeds the $20 million and it would therefore make no sense for Rakuten to post him. 

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  2. GW

    good post. i had the same thought, reading a few of these “of course they will post him” articles. as if rakuten’s owner is living paycheck to paycheck, and couldn’t possibly turn down 20 (pinky to mouth) million dollars.

    on some level, i admit that i hope they don’t post him. MLB seems to think that they can continually artificially depress the price of talent, without suffering any ill effects.

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  3. Jordan

    Can Rakuten still post him after year 8? If he’s a free agent in Japan but not internationally, how would that work? If Rakuten can still post him after the 2014 season than I see zero reason for them to post him now since he would surely fetch the same $20 million posting fee this time next year. It would seem the only thing MLB accomplished with this system is delaying the import of premium Japanese players. IMO it would have made much more sense to just let the player negotiate with all 30 teams and kick back a certain percentage, say 30 percent, of the total contract back to the Japanese team.

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  4. Author
    dmick89

    Brett is saying that he assumes Junior Lake will be the left fielder next year. That makes sense, but I’d been hoping they’d put him in CF since it seems they won’t be going after any of the free agent outfielders worth grabbing.

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  5. Author
    dmick89

    @ Jordan:
    I’m not really sure how posting would work after 2014. I’d assume they could not, but the team that eventually signs him could. If that’s true, there would be little chance, regardless of Tanaka’s possible hurt feelings, that Rakuten wouldn’t re-sign him. I don’t know.

    Good question.

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  6. Rice Cube

    After checking in with Yakyu Night Owl it seems that article was misinformed. The Japanese article references an interview with Peter Gammons from a while back and gives no new information. We still don’t know if Tanaka gets posted, however, but most folks are still leaning “post” and nobody else confirmed that blog post so I’m inclined to believe that Rakuten decides to take the $20MM.

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  9. Tommy

    dmick89 wrote:

    Brett is saying that he assumes Junior Lake will be the left fielder next year. That makes sense, but I’d been hoping they’d put him in CF since it seems they won’t be going after any of the free agent outfielders worth grabbing.

    Surprising they’d put his arm in left, it’s easily his best tool. You’d think they’d want to get that kind of weapon into CF (and RF on Schierholtz’s “sitting cause it’s a lefty” days)

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  10. Tommy

    Also, definitely agree with the article. The Eagles are a pretty good team, and Tanaka makes them a championship contender. Extra regular season ticket sales, playoff ticket sales, and merchandise all add up pretty quickly if Tanaka is still there and pitching well. I can’t imagine how some combination of “keep him and win”, “keep him and trade him”, or “keep him and extend him” couldn’t beat the $20mil from an MLB team.

    This is probably going to be a pattern for all elite Japanese players under the new posting system. The NPB is strong, and it’s not in their best interest to ship out their best talent for a relatively small amount of money. Until the restrictions are removed, or teams just get an agreed upon % of the MLB contract a player signs, I don’t think we’re going to see any impact-level player come to the MLB before they reach free agency.

    Stupid MLB owners have price-controlled themselves out of a market for elite talent.

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  14. Rice Cube

    @ Suburban kid:

    A meme is born.

    @ Tommy:

    Do NPB revenues/pay scales come close to rivaling MLB’s for the top players? I imagine 99% of the players in NPB would be happy with their salaries, but the super-elite would still want to get a piece of the MLB pie while they’re still in their primes.

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