The Asian Reporter
Pacific Northwest News q Volume 24 Number 6 q March 17, 2014 q www.asianreporter.com
Tanaka is first NPB player brought
to MLB with new posting agreement
By Mike Street
Special to The Asian Reporter
A
New rules in place
on Mount Everest
Page 2
Filipino glass artist
featured at Bullseye
Page 11
Japan marks 3/11
tsunami anniversary
Page 16
s Major League Base-
ball (MLB) and Nippon
Professional Baseball
(NPB) reshape transpacific
baseball traffic with their new
posting agreement, more east-
ern players than ever are play-
ing in the west. This MLB sea-
son welcomes the first player to
arrive under this new agree-
ment, along with a host of
others who have already estab-
lished themselves here.
Under the old posting agree-
ment, MLB teams submitted
sealed bids to NPB clubs, with
no limits on the bid amount, to
secure the exclusive negoti-
ating rights for a posted player.
If the two parties failed to
reach an agreement, the player
would return to NPB, and the
posting fee would not be paid.
This
process
presented
several problems. With no
limits on their sealed bid,
teams could grossly overpay for
a player, as the Red Sox did
when they shelled out $51
million just to negotiate with
Daisuke Matsuzaka in 2006.
Matsuzaka’s six-year, $52-
million contract represented
just half of his total acquisition
cost for Boston, hardly a fair
share of the revenue.
Worse, if a team failed to
reach an agreement after se-
curing negotiation rights, as
happened with the Oakland A’s
and Hisashi Iwakuma in 2010,
both the NPB player and club
were unhappy at the lost reve-
nue from the failed negotia-
tions. The MLB team, on the
other hand, lost nothing but
time, and Oakland showed that
other teams could offer a high
posting bid just to block an-
other club from acquiring a top
Japanese talent.
Continued on page 9
IMPROVED AGREEMENT. New York Yankees starting pitcher Masahiro Tanaka throws a pitch during an exhibition
baseball game against the Philadelphia Phillies in Clearwater, Florida. Tanaka signed a seven-year, $155-million contract with
the Yankees earlier this year. He was the first Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) player signed under the new posting agree-
ment between Major League Baseball and NPB. Tanaka’s contract is the fifth-highest in major-league history for a pitcher.
(AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
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