MLBPA extends the deadline for a new posting agreement by 24 hours

Our Shohei Ohtani transfer hopes will live to fight another day.

The MLBPA announced it is extending the deadline (which it arbitrarily created for maximum drama like it’s a CW soap) to come to an agreement on a new posting system for 24 hours. That gives the Players Association and Nippon Professional Baseball until Tuesday at 8 p.m. EST to compromise and get a new system in place.

MLB and NPB already reached an agreement for a new posting system, but the PA butted in and had its own requirements.

As Ken Rosenthal reports in The Athletic, the union wants the posting period to be shortened from three months to a scant 15 days so it affects free agency less overall; for NPB teams to be able to pull back players who were posted but signed to an unsatisfactory contract; and an additional percentage of a player’s contract value to go to their Japanese team if they are promoted to the majors within two years of signing in the U.S.

According to Jeff Passan, that first point is the most contentious at the moment. In a mostly petty way. With the MLBPA requesting a posting period from Nov. 1 to the 15th, Nippon offered Dec. 31, cutting the period short by a full month.

The MLBPA said no and wanted Dec. 1, and then Nippon went as far as December as the cutoff before stalling. It’s a classic sign of negotiations coming down to the tiniest of details and something that probably won’t matter in the overall picture, yet here we sit waiting for them to meet in the middle.

Without a new posting system that all sides agree on, no players will be posted from the Japanese league to MLB and therefore no Ohtani in the league in 2018. Which would be a real bummer.

That they are seemingly negotiating minuscule desires at this point leads me to believe another day should be more than enough to hammer this thing out and get to the exciting part where teams actually start attempting to sign him. Make it happen, please.