Will Tazawa signing affect future relations?

by Travis G on Nov 29, 2008 12:55 PM EST in New York Yankees Analysis

There was an unwritten rule before now that Japanese and American professional clubs would not sign amateurs from the other country. That rule has now been broken as 22-year-old Junichi Tazawa has accepted a 3-year, $6-million offer from the Red Sox.

Does this open the door for NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) to the American amateur market?

What if David Price said he didn't want to be drafted by a MLB team, preferring instead to play for an Independent League, in order to get more money from an NPB team? Could you really blame him for doing so? Why settle for a measly $8.5 million over six years (that he got from Tampa) when he could've easily gotten more from a Japanese team (or the Yankees for that matter) as a free agent?

In a perfect world, there wouldn't be a draft. We don't have drafts in our careers. Imagine going to college and majoring in journalism, then you have to enter a draft where any media outlet in the country could pick you and you basically have no choice but to work for them. Not fair at all from a player's perspective. It's obviously intended for the good of the league/sport as a whole, but is that worth taking away the freedom of choice from amateurs? Should a player be forced to live somewhere he doesn't want for years when, if he had any other job, he could choose where he worked?

Anyway, that's really beside the point. The main idea question here is: are we willing to watch our best amateurs bypass the draft to play in other countries? Will it actually happen? How will we and MLB respond if it does?

We know if the Yankees did this and broke a decades old rule, fans (especially those up north) would be breaking out the old 'Evil Empire' routine as just another example of Yankee hegemony and carelessness toward the whole of MLB.

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I don't think it will be a huge problem

MLB owners will stomp out any pesky contractual language they have to to make sure US homegrown talent enters our draft system first. It’s an advantage definitely for foreign players to be able to be considered free-agents but US players have better chances of being scouted so it comes close to evening out I think.

I don't want to play golf. When I hit a ball, I want someone else to go chase it. ~Rogers Hornsby

by kdog on Nov 30, 2008 8:49 PM EST reply actions

it's unlikely they could ever pass

a rule/law that would force US amateurs to decide between MLB or nothing at all. i just cant see that ever being legal. i know MLB is a legal monopoly, but they have no rights over amateur players – afaik, if Justin Smoak wanted to play for NPB, MLB couldn’t stop it. the only thing actually stopping it before was their hope that MLB owners wouldn’t ‘steal’ Japanese amateurs. that ‘agreement’ is over now.

if anything, it might eventually mean the end of the draft – just a huge pool of amateur free agents.

by Travis G on Dec 1, 2008 2:12 PM EST up reply actions

That

would ultimately be the best thing the Yankees could hope for.
Another realistic alternative would be that everyone who wants to play MLB would have to go through the draft, so no more Dominican recruiters, no more 16-year olds with million dollar signing bonuses.

"Have faith in the Yankees, my son. Think of the great DiMaggio."

by jscape2000 on Dec 3, 2008 1:16 AM EST up reply actions

it would definitely

benefit the Yankees.

but if we’re talking about a good system for the ‘good of the game’, it’s not the current one, which is unfair to both US amateurs and smaller market teams. a worldwide draft would be best, but that truly fair to the players.

I could see Scott Boras trying to break the system one day by threatening to send a great amateur to Japan. he already kind of did that with JD Drew.

by Travis G on Dec 3, 2008 10:14 AM EST up reply actions