Shohei Ohtani wants to come to Major League Baseball in time for the 2018 season, but there is now a holdup in that quest. MLB’s Players Union doesn’t like the posting system, and wants an agreement to change it. According to Ken Rosenthal, however, their issue isn’t with the current posting system, but instead the one that is set to replace this one.
The deadline for a new posting system is Monday night
Monday’s Say Hey, Baseball looks at what could keep Shohei Ohtani from coming to MLB.
Photo by Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images
So, the MLBPA set up a deadline of 8 p.m. ET on Monday for themselves, MLB, and Nippon Professional Baseball to come to terms on a new posting agreement, or else, Ohtani isn’t going to be posted. The MLBPA wants a deadline in place to announce posted players, so that potentially posted players don’t hold up free agency at home. They also want to scrap the new system that allows an NPB team to cancel a posting if they don’t like the contract the player signs: Under that rule, NPB teams receive a percentage of a player’s contract, rather than the current $20 million maximum.
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MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is not concerned with any of this, as he believes an agreement will be reached. As Whitney McIntosh pointed out in the linked story, however, Manfred not thinking this is a big deal doesn’t mean the MLBPA feels the same, and the whole process has a third party, the NPB, to consider as well. Even “small issues” can be time-consuming to solve, and that’s assuming all three parties actually believe the issues are small.
Rosenthal does believe Ohtani will be posted, which likely means the union has earned themselves a chance to discuss the future of the posting system at length at another time, in exchange for letting Ohtani proceed under the current system they have no issue with right now. Again, though, we’ll see how it all plays out over the next few hours.
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- Jon Morosi reports that the Cardinals have also made an offer on Stanton. The Red Sox are expected to be the next team to submit one.
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- The Dodgers are already full of talented youngsters, but guess what, there are more of them on the farm.
- The deadline to add players to the 40-man roster and protect those eligible from the Rule 5 draft is also Monday night at 8 p.m. ET.
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