Earlier this month, it was reported that Roki Sasaki’s posting request would be honored. Since Sasaki has not met the traditional requirements to be posted, now is a perfect time to explain how the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) posting system works.
The traditional way a player can be posted is 25 years if he has accumulated nine years of service time OR is 25 years old. Over 85% of NPB players who have been posted have had at least one of those.
If a player reaches one of those requirements, he is posted as an international free agent with no restrictions. Meaning the player can be signed for as much as a team wants to pay him, as well as the posting fee to the team.
The posting fee is calculated based on the size of the contract. Over 80% of NPB to MLB contracts are over 50 million dollars. Therefore the posting fee per MLB Index is as follows.
“ For Major League contracts with a total guaranteed value of $50,000,001 or more, the release fee will be 20 percent of the first $25 million plus 17.5 percent of the next $25 million plus 15 percent of the total guaranteed value exceeding $50 million.”
The higher the contract the player signs with the team, the larger the posting fee.
For example, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was 25 when he was posted. The Dodgers paid the Orix Buffaloes over $50,000,000 as a posting fee on top of the 325-million-dollar contract. Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, Seiya Suzuki, and Masataka Yoshida are other players signed this way.
Roki Sasaki’s posting at the age of 23 reveals the other way to be posted. If a player does not meet one of the two requirements, he can only be posted if the club approves the request.
As a result of his age and less than required service time, Roki is posted as an amateur international free agent. This means he can be signed with teams’ international pool money. Once the player signs the contract, they must go through six years of team control and can’t become a free agent until the end of those six years.
For example, Shohei Ohtani’s posting request was approved in the offseason of 2017/2018 at the age of 23. Because of his age, Ohtani was capped at international spending and agreed to a deal with the Angels for 2.315 million.
The latter method of posting is not often used, as the team will lose a lot of money on the posting fee due to the contract cap. This is why players often wait until they are 25 to be posted.
Whoever signs Roki Sasaki will have him under team control for six seasons before he hits the MLB free agent market. Had he waited two years, Sasaki would have been looking at a contract exceeding $200 Million.
