Comment by Steve Schapiro

January 11, 2008 @ 10:58 am

Looks rough in IE, guys.

Back to the topic, did all of these guys finish their initial 9 years? Is that a hard and fast requirement? Some of these guys seem young.

Comment by Torii

January 12, 2008 @ 9:45 am

Thanks for the update, Chris, but I miss your drunken prognostications. Any chance you can drag DeOrio back into the studio to complain about all the players Tokyo lost? Or the players Japan lost for that matter.

And Steve, good question. WHat are the conditions for a player to break that starting nine year deal?

Comment by Pellegrini

January 12, 2008 @ 3:35 pm

Steve,
Sorry for the slow reply. Thanks for the heads up–we’re on it.

And to answer your question, yes, all of the guys in the above list finished their initial contract. With the exception of Woods, they have all played at least nine years with the team that drafted them. However, I need to clarify something: not all of the guys have met the eligibility requirements for free agency. I included Kobayashi because he’s a prominent pitcher, and it seemed like he wanted to be made available to MLB teams via the posting system.

Fukuura was drafted straight out of high school back in 1993. 2008 will be the 32-year-old’s 15th season in the NPB. Fukuura reached the eligibility requirements for free agency during the 2006 season.

Iwase hit free agency for the first time this year. 2007 was his 9th full season of play at the top level of the Chunichi organization.

Woods is potentially a free agent every time he finishes a contract.

Kobayashi, drafted in 1996, had been signaling that he wanted to follow a couple of his teammates from the Lotte bullpen overseas (Yabuta and Masahide Kobayashi (no relation) have both signed with MLB teams this off-season) via the posting system.

Takahashi could have filed for free agency, but didn’t, as he met the requirements during the 2007 season.

Nakamura, who attended Shibuya High School in Tokyo, could also have declared free agency this off-season.

Tanishige can declare free agency any time he finishes a contract.

I hope that clears things up a little!

Comment by Pellegrini

January 12, 2008 @ 3:50 pm

Torii,
Cheers for that!
We’ll be teaming up again soon.

WHat are the conditions for a player to break that starting nine year deal?

The free agency system in Japan is quite restrictive when compared side by side with that of the MLB. The only ways for a player to break out of the initial nine year period that his club has complete control over him are:

1) he convinces the team that he should be made available to MLB teams through the posting system

2) he retires due to injury or leaves baseball for some other reason (including death)

3) he is traded to another team

Off the top of my head, those are the only ways that a player can separate himself from the team that originally drafted him. Of course, the player’s wishes can easily be trumped by the suits in the front office regarding the posting option.

Other than that, the only time a player could be said to really control whether or not he plays for the team that gave him his initial contract is when he retires due to an injury or other personal reasons (ie. he’s getting old and wants to leave the game willingly before he is forced to retire).

Comment by Garrett DeOrio

January 12, 2008 @ 10:40 pm

What precisely are the safeguards against cheating by retiring, then making a comeback? Would the previous contract automatically be assumed to remain in force?

On top of that, given that players are stuck with the team that drafts them through their ninth season, how was Darvish able to get such a sweet deal? Why not pay him league minimum since he’s not going anywhere anyway?

Comment by Christopher Pellegrini

January 12, 2008 @ 11:55 pm

Garrett,

What precisely are the safeguards against cheating by retiring, then making a comeback?

I’m not entirely sure, but I would be willing to bet that no other team in Japan would pick the guy up. They would have to be really careful on this point because then every player who felt that he was underpaid/under-appreciated would just retire and resurface with a different team. The same applies to Japanese players retiring in Japan and then heading to the majors.

Alfonso Soriano did that sort of thing back when he played for a very short while in Japan. He “retired” in Japan and headed back to the states. This violated Japanese league rules at the time, but because it was later found that NPB hadn’t properly disclosed the nature of certain rule changes to the MLB Soriano was allowed to leave. The posting system is reportedly the result of the Soriano-fiasco.

Why not pay him league minimum since he’s not going anywhere anyway?

Good call. That’s definitely how it usually works in the MLB anyway. Most young players look at their first three years as “paying their dues” and building up their stats so that they can get fair market value when it’s time to negotiate (players who have three full seasons under their belt in the majors are entitled to salary arbitration).

In Darvish’s case, I think the new salary is a bit of a thank you and reward for two amazing seasons. It may also be there to engender some good will between the player and the team. The Fighters know that they are not going to be able to keep him around for the entirety of his pre-free agency career (a little more than six years left to go), so maybe they just want to keep him happy and working hard.

He’s also a family-man now, so maybe there’s some company policy in place to help players with dependents (but I kind of doubt it).

Comment by Pellegrini

January 13, 2008 @ 5:23 pm

From my last comment:

The posting system is reportedly the result of the Soriano-fiasco.

I neglected to mention that Hideki Irabu, who was infinitely more famous than Soriano at the time, exploited the same loophole in order to leave the NPB in 1997. Before that it was Hideo Nomo in 1995 who “retired” and left to join the Los Angeles Dodgers. It is safe to say that Nomo and Irabu’s departures had more to do with the imposition of the posting system than Soriano’s did.

Anyway, the agreement between the NPB and MLB (the posting system) is such that the only other way for a player to leave the former is through declaring free agency.

Quoting myself again for clarification purposes (referring to Yu Darvish):

…so maybe they just want to keep him happy and working hard.

Wayne Graczyk, author of the “Baseball Bullet-In” column over at the Japan Times, has posited that the extra money may be a way of keeping Darvish from asking to be posted after the 2008 season.

When trying to explain the large boost in salary that Darvish received, I think that is probably the best explanation that I’ve heard so far.

Comment by Garrett DeOrio

January 13, 2008 @ 6:28 pm

What I keep coming back to with Darvish is why it matters. So he asks to be posted, so Hokkaido says no, so that’s that. The only real reason I see to keep him happy would be to entice him to stay on once his nine years are up, which is highly unlikely unless his abilities decline to the point at which the team won’t be that worried about keeping him around anyway.

As far as helping out family men, I don’t think young Darvish was exactly hurting in the first place.

I think Darvish has something on the directors of Nippon Ham.

At any rate, I think we’ve just scripted a show.