MLB, NPB nearing agreement on new posting system

Rakuten was reportedly the last of the 12 NPB teams to agree to the new deal, from which one can infer their reticence to go along with this. Under the new deal, Rakuten stands to get just $20 million if they choose to post Tanaka (teams will surely be lining up to sign him at such a reasonable price). If they choose to keep him though, he will not be a free agent until after the 2015 season. So the question they are asking themselves is whether it is more valuable to have Tanaka pitch for them for another two years and get nothing when he walks, or to post him now and get the $20 million. It seems they are inclined to the former.

Of course, all this raises the question of why NPB and MLB would agree to such a deal in the first place. It gives NPB teams less money for their best players and, apparently, makes it less likely that MLB will get to import their best players. As it is, it looks like a lose-lose. We’ll have to see how this develops.

As of yesterday, Tanaka’s team, the Rakuten Golden Eagles, were the only NPB team that had not signed off on the new deal. Presumably, they were hoping to extract more than $20 million in a posting fee for their superstar ace. But it seems they have ultimately signed off on the deal, removing the last significant road block to Tanaka’s move to the Major Leagues.

In the event that multiple teams place the maximum $20 million bid for a player like Tanaka, which seems inevitable, the player himself will have the freedom to negotiate with any team that posts the maximum bid. This is a key departure from the previous agreement, in which the player was forced to negotiate with the highest bidder and so had little leverage. The new deal means less money to the NPB posting team and more money to the player, which is precisely what MLB wanted.

Tanaka could be offered a nine-figure contract in addition to the posting fee, which likely wouldn’t have been the case under the old system. The proposed agreement would direct more of the money Tanaka’s way and less to his NPB club. That might steer teams away from posting their players in the future, an executive of one American League team told Yahoo! Sports’ Jeff Passan.

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Nippon Professional Baseball is expected to accept Major League Baseball’s latest proposal outlining major changes to the posting system that allows contracted players to move from Japan to the States, reports Patrick Newman of NPB Tracker (via Sanspo).

MLB has not heard from NPB officials yet, according to Joel Sherman of the NY Post, so there’s still the possibility that it won’t go through. However, Japanese media reports like the one from Sanspo above indicate that officials will agree to implement the newest proposal, which was brought to the table Wednesday morning.

Major League Baseball and the Japanese Nippon Pro Baseball league will continue negotiations on a new posting agreement Thursday, according to a Japanese media report. (h/t Ben Badler of Baseball America)

Under the now-expired posting agreement, a player under contract in Japan could be posted by his NPB team to play in the MLB. American teams would then place blind bids, with the highest bidder winning the opportunity to negotiate a deal with the player. The Japanese team gets to keep the bidding fee. However, if no contract is reached between the MLB team and the player within 30 days, both the player and the bidding fee were returned to their original teams.