Money and contracts are always among the issues that pop up in any league regarding signing free agents. Like Major League Baseball, Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan has various labor battles and more in their league. But the players of NPB really want to pursue an MLB opportunity sooner than the posting system allows them to.
The NPB has two different forms of free agency. A player can achieve domestic free agency after seven to eight years in the league, depending on whether the player was drafted out of high school or college. Once that mark is achieved, a player can sign with another NPB club. The process for qualifying for international free agency, which would allow a player to sign with an MLB organization, is nine years. The Japan Baseball Players Association (JBPA) is working to lower this number to six years, the same amount of time an MLB player needs for free agency.
Once a player in the NPB reaches the nine years of service time, those players are made available to qualify for the posting system. Once a player is posted, a 45-day negotiating window opens up to discuss a contract. If a player is able to agree to an MLB contract during the negotiating period, the NPB club receives a posting fee, which is equivalent to the size of the contract the player got from the MLB club that signs them. The larger contract a player signs leads to a larger posting fee. For example, Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s 12-year, $325MM contract, the Dodgers had to pay $51MM to the Orix Buffaloes, the team that posted him.
This information raises the question of whether the next phenom pitcher, Roki Sasaki, can wait a few more years if the posting system changes or if he still plans to head to the MLB this offseason. Before a player turns 25, players are subjected to the international bonus pool system, where teams get roughly $4-8MM to use for player bonuses. Sasaki does not turn 23 before November so that he could fall into a similar situation as Shohei Ohtani.
Ohtani joined the Los Angeles Angels before his age-23 season. Ohtani only received a $2.3MM signing bonus, significantly less than what Yoshinobu Yamamoto got, since he waited after his 25th birthday.
It will be great to see how the JPBA plans to implement this to help players reach and achieve their dreams of playing in the MLB. It is also a very complicated legal matter involving Japanese antitrust laws, with JPBPA working on filing a challenge to the NPB’s reverse system at some point soon. We will have to see how long it will take for a deal to be made between the two sides.
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WBN Nippon Professional Baseball: https://worldbaseball.com/league/japan/
Photo Credit: This picture taken on April 17, 2022 shows Lotte Marines pitcher Roki Sasaki watching the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) match. (Photo by JIJI PRESS / AFP) / Japan OUT (Photo by STR/JIJI PRESS/AFP via Getty Images)
