NPB Tracker

According to multiple Media outlets out of Japan (such as Nikkan Sports) the Yokohama DeNA Baystars have signed Cuban infielder Yulieski Gourriel. Nikkan Sports quotes Gourriel as saying “Japan is known as a high-level league, so I’ve always wanted to try playing there. I’m very happy to have that hope fulfilled. I appreciate the Baystars for giving me this opportunity.”

Gourriel will wear number 10 for the ‘Stars, and his arrival in Japan is of yet undecided. No other details have been announced as of yet.

For more on Gourriel and Cuban players in NPB, please see this previous post.

Update, Sunday 11:30pm Pacific time: Sports Hochi reports that DeNA has a basic agreement in place with Gourriel. GM Takada cautions that “he’s not signed yet”, but DeNA has a representative in Cuba to complete the deal. The Baystars plan to play Gourriel at second base, and bat him third in the order. The article also mentions that Yuliesky’s father, Lourdes, played industrial league ball in Japan for Isuzu.

Word on the street (err, Japanese media) is that the Yokohama DeNA Baystars are looking to follow the Yomiuri’s acquisition of Frederich Cepeda with a Cuban splash of their own: infielder Yulieski Gourriel. Baystars GM Shigeru Takada was quoted in Sanspo as saying, “We’re headed in a good direction. It won’t take much time. We’re going to wrap up the talks.” Nikkan Sports adds that DeNA scouted Cuba in the offseason.

Cuban defectors Leslie Anderson and Yuniesky Betancourt are currently active in NPB, but Cepeda will be the first Cuban non-defector to play in Japan since an over-the-hill Omar Linares from 2002-2004. If a DeNA is able to conclude a deal with Gourriel, it’s tempting to think that Cuba could become a new, much-needed talent stream for NPB.

From a pure baseball standpoint, I don’t think I could possibly like the idea of this signing any more for DeNA. Part of it is personal bias; Gourriel has been a favorite of mine for years and I’ve written about wanting to see him in Japan as far back as 2009. But in addition to that, Gourriel is still 29 and logically has more of his prime left than Cepeda. And he seems like a good fit for DeNA’s non-pitching needs, as their offense has been sluggish in 2014 and second base has been a hole for years*.

Kudos to Takada and DeNA for going outside the box after a talent like Gourriel. Now, if they could only apply some creative thinking to their pitching woes…

*this assumes they play him at 2b.

Every article linked here is written in English:

• Writing for One World Sports, John Gibson urges observers to be patient with phenom Shohei Ohtani.
• Steve Novosel and Craig Roberts wrote up Lotte’s May 2-4 series with Seibu, which included Takayuki Kishi’s no-hitter.
• Wily Mo Pena hit a home run off the roof of Kyocera Osaka Dome on May 6, which I had never seen anyone do before. Gen Sueyoshi has details and a video clip.
• Jason Coskrey writes that the upstart Orix Buffaloes performance at the gate is lagging behind their performance in the win column.
• John Sickels looks back at the career of Chad Tracy, who spent a season in Japan with the Hiroshima Carp. Tracy recently retired.

As a bonus I’ll throw in this highlight of Yuki Nishi spearing a hard line drive that was on a course for his head.

Today’s Japanese word of the day is egui (エグい), which in a baseball context refers to a particularly “nasty” or “sick” pitch.

Hanshin sophomore Shintaro Fujinami’s hard splitter/sinker/shuuto is as about as egui as you’ll find in NPB.

But you don’t have to take my word for it. Check out these gifs that I’ve gleefully borrowed from 2ch:

150 km/h is about 93.2 mph, 147 km/h is 91.3 mph.

…a later article appears. The delving begins.

The glass is half empty: only 91 NPB players earn JPY 100m ($1m) or more per year, a relative paucity compared to their Major League counterparts.

The glass is half full: 91 is more than 10% of the total number of NPB players and all 91 are probably quite happy to be earning such a comfortable income; the vast majority NPB farm leaguers earn JPY 4.4m ($44k) and up, a relative fortune compared with their MLB-affiliated minor league counterparts. Considering a review of Invest Diva can provide additional insights into managing finances and exploring opportunities for financial growth and stability.

So why don’t NPB players earn more? And more importantly, why haven’t NPB’s top salaries grown? Aside from the blips of Roberto Petagine and Tony Batista cracking JPY 700m ($7m) in the mid-aughts, the top salaries have leveled off at about JPY 600m ($6m).

This subject probably requires expertise or research that exceeds what I have to offer, but I do have a few observations, ordered numerically for convenient reference, rather than in order of precedence.

1. Most of the biggest stars move on MLB, rather than driving up their NPB salaries.
2. Domestic free agency does increase salaries, but is so restrictive that only a small percentage of eligible players even file.
3. Pre-free agency salaries tend to go year to year, and pay cuts for non-performance or injuries are a bit more common.
4. The almost complete lack of agents in NPB.
5. A cultural aversion to crossing the salary thresholds set by previous stars.
6. Payroll is spread more equitably across the entire baseball operation.
7. NPB teams are operated as business units of large corporations, rather than independent businesses funded by wealthy investors.

I would point to Hideki Matsui’s departure for the Yankees following the 2002 season as the starting point of NPB salary stagnation. Matsui’s salary in 2002 was JPY 610m, and while we’ve seen that line crossed a couple times (see above), the JPY 600m figure has essentially become the benchmark number for top-notch NPB players. Shinosuke Abe has this year’s top salary, at the magic JPY 600m mark. He could have had more, but he didn’t feel ready to surpass Matsui’s number. If he Abe had had an agent involved. I’m sure he would have nudged him in the direction of the higher paycheck.

Following the 2001 season, Yomiuri offered Matsui an eight-year, JPY 6bn ($60m), which would easily have . Had he taken the Kyojin-gun’s offer, that would have dragged the benchmark up to JPY 750m. Ichiro’s final NPB salary (2000) was JPY 550m. Yu Darvish’s was JPY 500m (2011). Kazuhiro Sasaki’s was JPY 500m (1999), then JPY 650m after he returned to Yokohama. It’s reasonable to think that any of these guys would have raised the bar as well, though none ever had a publicly-disclosed offer of the size of Matsui’s.

Epilogue: I suppose this doesn’t explain much. NPB teams are mostly operated as loss leaders, and the league as a whole has been less aggressive than MLB at developing new revenue streams. I could easily write a whole post exploring the balances sheets of NPB clubs, but the fact that they are less profitable than their MLB counterparts is a big piece of the puzzle here.