2008 Woodie Awards
Cultivating baseball's international talent
There is a vast divide between handling of Cuban and Japanese prospects
Matt McGraw
Issue date: 11/13/06 Section: Maine Sports
This year's crop of Major League Baseball free agents is lacking a group of high profile players. There will be some big contracts handed out this winter, but aside from Alfonso Soriano, the free agent market doesn't have many superstars to offer. So where are MLB teams turning to find new talent? The Japanese Baseball League.
While it is not new for teams to bid on Japanese baseball players, it certainly is rare to see this much interest in the bidding process, although this may be a sign of things to come. Japan has traditionally been known as a baseball powerhouse, and with this year's World Baseball Classic's victory, many casual fans witnessed how good these guys can be. Japan has been a participant in the medal rounds of baseball in every Olympic tournament since 1984, winning one gold, two silver, and two bronze medals.
In order for a MLB team to acquire a JBL player, the team must follow a complex bureaucratic process. Any team interested in a certain player sends an official bid to the MLB office before the bidding deadline. When the deadline passes, MLB determines the highest bid and forwards it to the Japanese team that controls the rights to the player in question. The Japanese team then has 96 hours to accept or reject the bid. If they accept, the MLB team with the accepted bid allowed to negotiate a contract with the player. To make a long story short, a MLB team needs to pay a huge amount of money to a Japanese team, just to be allowed to pay a huge amount of money to the Japanese player.
The two biggest auctions on the Japanese market are for Daisuke Matsuzaka of the Seibu Lions and Akinori Iwamura of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. Matsuzaka was named MVP of the World Baseball Classic and went 3-0 with a 1.38 ERA in the WBC. Last year, with the Lions, Matsuzaka went 17-5 with 200 K's in 186.1 innings. Iwamura, who has won five gold gloves at third base -one by default, four because he is good - is known more as a power hitter than a gold-glover. In the past three seasons, Iwamura has a .310 batting average with 77 doubles and 106 home runs. There is no doubt that baseball fans everywhere are excited to see what these two will do next summer.
While it is not new for teams to bid on Japanese baseball players, it certainly is rare to see this much interest in the bidding process, although this may be a sign of things to come. Japan has traditionally been known as a baseball powerhouse, and with this year's World Baseball Classic's victory, many casual fans witnessed how good these guys can be. Japan has been a participant in the medal rounds of baseball in every Olympic tournament since 1984, winning one gold, two silver, and two bronze medals.
In order for a MLB team to acquire a JBL player, the team must follow a complex bureaucratic process. Any team interested in a certain player sends an official bid to the MLB office before the bidding deadline. When the deadline passes, MLB determines the highest bid and forwards it to the Japanese team that controls the rights to the player in question. The Japanese team then has 96 hours to accept or reject the bid. If they accept, the MLB team with the accepted bid allowed to negotiate a contract with the player. To make a long story short, a MLB team needs to pay a huge amount of money to a Japanese team, just to be allowed to pay a huge amount of money to the Japanese player.
The two biggest auctions on the Japanese market are for Daisuke Matsuzaka of the Seibu Lions and Akinori Iwamura of the Tokyo Yakult Swallows. Matsuzaka was named MVP of the World Baseball Classic and went 3-0 with a 1.38 ERA in the WBC. Last year, with the Lions, Matsuzaka went 17-5 with 200 K's in 186.1 innings. Iwamura, who has won five gold gloves at third base -one by default, four because he is good - is known more as a power hitter than a gold-glover. In the past three seasons, Iwamura has a .310 batting average with 77 doubles and 106 home runs. There is no doubt that baseball fans everywhere are excited to see what these two will do next summer.
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