Posting Rule Changes

[Johnny Sleeper]

There have been a lot of reports about MLB and the Japanese league changing the posting system. Recent reports are saying that the change will be that the player will give the top three teams and will get to choose from them who they want to talk to. Only one team will be able to negotiate This will make for some interesting changes in not only strategy for bidding, but also in who will actually gain advantages and what teams players will choose.

The obvious winners would appear to be teams in NY, LA and Chicago as those are the American cities that are the most famous through the world. Small market winners would seem to be Seattle, owned by Nintendo, and Texas, Yu Darvish is there. I think this hurts teams like Houston, Arizona, KC, Milwaukee, etc. However, this system could encourage some of the smaller market teams to bid more, because they would, in theory, have a better chance of being one of the three teams and the person might not want to play for the Yankees, Cubs or another internationally known team.

The effects on bid strategy have already started being theorized on. The most obvious is that this probably reduces the maximum bid. It has been speculated that the Rangers won Darvish by over $10M, some think it was closer. Either way if you only have to be in the top three you are not trying to outbid everyone and it will prevent someone like the Yankees from dropping a $75M bid on Tanaka, and future players, just to make sure they win. This will probably increase the average bid. Teams that would throw a $25M bid before knowing there was little chance of winning could easily decide to throw in a $30M bid knowing they would have a significantly improved chance with only having to be in the top three. It could also encourage teams who wouldn't have bid $30M because they expect to lose to go ahead and throw a bid in since that could land in the top 3.

With the Cubs expected to be aggressive on Tanaka this could be a game changer. It would suck to be in the top 3 just to have Tanaka choose to go the Yankees or Dodgers because he'd rather be on a coast or in Hollywood. Another way MLB is trying to minimize the advantages in accumulating unproven talent by the bigger market clubs. What I really wish MLB would do is to just throw a cap on total spending. Let that cap include the draft, international signings and your big league roster. This would require them also setting a salary floor, as the NBA and NFL have. Ironically, the biggest issue to a cap is not from the big market teams, but from the smaller market teams like Oakland, KC, TB, etc who do not want to be forced to spend money unless the revenue sharing model is revamped so to protect their profits.

 

[anotheridiot]

any international player that wants to play in the states should simply be added to the international draft and follow those rules. this ends up like Yao Ming in communist china with china getting half of everything he earned for their work training him.

The nfl is nuts in europe trying to get a team in london. they want everyone wearing nfl attire. Seems mlb wants the same when these international players fans order jerseys from their new team. It is almost like the NFL in a way, before they capped rookie contracts where college juniors were signing 60 million dollar contracts and never played a single snap in the nfl.

Thousands of drafted players are fighting their way thru systems everywhere and end up replaced by these sometimes good sometimes bad signings. If these international players want here so bad, let them be drafted, give them a one year contract and allow them to become a free agent with compensation going to the team that loses him. Give that draft team a year to negotiate long term deals. Small teams know there will be a good player, but added expense for interpreters so might pass anyway, and MLB could sell an extra jersey to the fans in japan.

 

[Johnny Sleeper]

When dealing with players from Japan it can't work that way. Their Japanese organization owns their rights for 9 years. That is why there was no posting for Fujikawa. He had already served his time and was a FA in Japan so he could sign anywhere. The system works both ways. The Cubs got compensation from Japan for LaHair, because they still owned his rights.