NPB Tracker

I touched on the ikusei (training) system at the end of my 2009 NPB Team Payroll Ranking piece, but how exactly does that system work?

The number of contracted players each NPB team is allowed to carry on its roster is 70. Previously, if teams wanted to carry more than 70 players, they invited players as practice players (players who could not participate in regular season games, but were allowed to practice with the team). However the system came to an end when teams were using the system to their benefit and inviting as many promising players as possible.

After the the system was discontinued, NPB teams were in need of another development system, with the number of amateur teams and industrial league teams diminishing and players losing opportunities to play.  That is how the ikusei player system was born. So let me touch on how the ikusei player system works…

• Teams with more than 65 players on the books are allowed to utilize the system
• Ikusei players are only allowed to participate in a Ni-gun(Minor League) game and only five players per team are allowed to play
• Ikusei players may change status to a contracted player by end of July, but foreign players over the age of 26 are only allowed to transfer by the end of March
• Ikusei players will wear a three-digit number and if the status changes, the player also needs to change its number to a one or two-digit number
• Ikusei players may be included in trades until the end of July

Since the establishment of the ikusei system there have been couple success stories…

• The first ikusei player to play in a NPB game was Michitaka Nishiyama of the Softbank Hawks
• Tetsuya Yamaguchi (Pitched for Japan in WBC 2009) of the Yomiuri Giants earned the first victory as a player coming from the ikusei player system
• Former Major Leaguer Norihiro Nakamura signed with the Chunichi Dragons as a ikusei player in 2007 and finished the season as the MVP of the Japan Championship Series
• 29 year-old Yuuki Tanaka, who signed as an ikusei player with the Tokyo Yakult Swallows was promoted on May 11. The winner of 23 career NPB games will be attempting his comeback after being released by the Orix Buffaloes in 2008
• Hayato Doue, who had signed with the Red Sox prior to 2008 but couldn’t get a work visa, is currently with the SoftBank Hawks after being promoted from an ikusei player at the start of the 2009 season. Doue was taken with the last pick of 2008 ikusei draft

Currently there are 49 total ikusei players on the 12 NPB teams, with the Tokyo Yomiuri Giants having 12 under contract (As of May 12, 2009).

Let’s take a look at how actively teams are spending on foreign players. Each NPB team is allowed to only have four foreign players on its 25-man roster, but there is no organizational limit on foreign players. Many teams choose to hold more, and allow them to compete for a roster spots. As you can see in the rankings, many teams are unable to maxmimize the foreign player slots on their 25-man roster.

Out of 39 foreign players on NPB 25-man rosters, 13 have previous experience in Japan with a different team. In-season additions like Jose Ortiz for the Softbank Hawks and Scott McClain by the Hiroshima Toyo Carp are two recent examples of this,  showing how teams are more likely to take a risk on a player that knows Japanese baseball rather than looking for new talent overseas.

 

 * NPB rosters as of May 6, 2009

Note: the 2014 revision of this post is here.

What great timing — just after we published the 2009 NPB Payroll Ranking, the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association announced their 2009 average salary numbers. The 738 players’ (not including foreign non-union players other than Chen Weiyin from the Chunichi Dragons) average salary for the 2009 season amounts to 3793K yen, which is 4.5 percent higher than the previous season.

The Tokyo Yomiuri Giants lost the top spot after holding the highest average salary for 14 consecutive seasons. The Hanshin Tigers earn the crown for the first time since the numbers began being published in 1988. The reason for Tigers reaching the top is that they have the highest Japanese paid player in Tomoaki Kanemoto and the main players on the roster earning at the 2M range. The runner-up is the Softbank Hawks and, suprisingly, in third place is the Yomiuri Giants. The Hiroshima Toyo Carp are in the last spot for the second year in a row. As most foreign players are not included in these numbers, it’s really the average payroll for the Japanese players on each team.

* Note: these figures have been converted to US Dollars on May 3rd.

This ranking is based on calculating information from Daily Sports Online, and converting into US dollars at the April 24 dollar-yen exchange rate from Google Finance. The numbers are based on the start of the 2009 season. I hope this will be interesting and insightful for new NPB fans to learn how much Japanese teams pay their players.

• One note is that teams with more than 70 players on contract are from the existence of ikusei (training) players.

Hisashi Iwakuma‘s stellar performance in the World Baseball Classic has lead to his first nationwide commercial appearance. Sukiya, a national fastfood chain, will utilize Iwakuma to promote its new prices for their main menu items. Selecting a nationally popular figure on the was the reasoning behind selecting Iwakuma as the face of the company for the forseeable future.

Iwakuma plays in a small home market, Sendai, and even though he was the Sawamura Award winner (top pitcher) in 2008, his marketability did not increase immediately. It was his performance on the international stage that boosted his publicity to a national level.

Although many players use the WBC as an audition for a Major League roster spot, Iwakuma is a great example of how performing on the international stage can lead to other opportunities. The players and manager of the Korean national team are also receiving endorsement opportunities as manager In-Sik Kim, pitcher Hyunjin Ryu, and infielders Tae Kyun Kim, and Bum Ho Lee are featured in an advertisment poster for the Galleria shopping mall. Infielder Dae Ho Lee also captilized on opportunities being the image character for Lotte Milk and Pusan Bank. Ownership companies for Korean teams tend to be more passive toward using their own players as their image character and the decision of utilizing players in this capacity shows how much of an impact the WBC had on Korea as well.

After spending 24 years on the riverbed of Osaka’s polluted Dotonbori, the statue of Colonel Sanders has reemerged. The statue was thrown into the river 24 years ago when fans were celebrating the Hanshin Tigers’ first championship championship since 1964. The statue apparently looked similiar to star player, Randy Bass, and the fans decided to throw the statue into the air to honor him. Nobody thought it was a good idea to pull the statue back up at the time.

24 years have passed and despite coming close on occassions, the Tigers have not reached the top of NPB since. Although it is nowhere near the drought of the Chicago Cubs and their Billy Goat curse, fans have come to believe the Curse of Colonel Sanders is the reason that the Tigers haven’t won another Japan championship. However with its re-discovery on March 10th, die-hard Tigers fans hope that the drought will finally come to an end.

Even though the disappearance of the Colonel Sanders statue was due to fans overreacting after the championship, the Hanshin Tigers are capable of  promoting and marketing the return of the Colonel Sanders as part of thier folklore. The statue has been on couple television shows already and the team hopes to retrieve the statue for the future as it will be taken to the Kentucky Fried Chicken Office in Tokyo for the time being.

The Sankei News has comments from the new manager, Akinobu Mayumi: “The reason for the drought probably is not all about the Colonel Sanders, but receiving all this attention, we should definitely bring the statue back to Koshien.” It is somewhat ironic that he was part of the 1985 championship Hanshin Tigers as a player and will manage his first season in the year that the Colonel Sanders has returned.

There are number of speculations on the future of the statue with stories such as the Chicago Cubs might being interested in borrowing the statue. However, the obvious should be to place the statue in the  Koshien history museum, which will open to public on March of 2010. There is a different Colonel Sanders statue stationed in front of the KFC stand inside Koshien Stadium (the only Colonel Sanders statue inside a ballpark in Japan) and it’s increasing popularity with fans attending the national tournament taking their time to take pictures with the statue.

PR staff from KFC comments: “it’s the only one in the world. We hope to face the “Old” Colonel Sanders statue with our statue inside the ballpark and form a duo.”

Open question to readers: is there a paradigm shift coming in baseball? In sports in general?

Context: in the last ten years, we’ve seen the emergence of the web lead to paradigm shifts in a number of different businesses. Retail was among the first affected, with the rise of e-commerce and websites like amazon.com and eBay. Then we saw the music industry try and ultimately fail to shut down online music sharing, and the rise of iTunes, the return of the single and the demise of CD sales. Now the news media industry is going through an identity crisis, with publications going under and the industry at large trying to figure out how to transition from paper to digital mediums while remaining profitable.

In the three examples I listed above, the web changed the basic way customers purchase and consume the products. That doesn’t seem entirely possible in sports — you’ll still have live events and TV and radio. Also, in each of the three examples there was an external, disruptive force involved. The sports business is somewhat isolated from that because of the monopolistic nature of the top leagues.

So where is the paradigm shift in sports? I suppose the fan experience is a little different. This blog, and others like it, provides information would otherwise be unavailable in English. Without the web, it wouldn’t exist as  I couldn’t afford to bootstrap a print publication. But do independant blogs and other online resources change the way teams on either side of Pacific operate? Do they change the way fans consume the baseball product?

An obvious shortcut to marketability in Japan is making a name for yourself in the National High School Tournament held at Koshien Stadium every spring and summer. That’s the road many players took to gain national attention, including Daisuke Matsuzaka, with his stellar performance in the 1998 tournament, and Hideki Matsui, who was intentionally walked in five straight at bats in the 1992 tournament. Let’s take a look at some other Koshien heroes who were on this year’s WBC roster, and how they feature on Japan’s promotional landscape.

• Masahiro Tanaka (Two-time champion, 2004, 2005 tournaments) has become one of the most newsworthy pitchers in Japan. Known affectionately as Maa-Kun, he has been seen nationally in commercials for organizations such as the Red Cross and House Food Product, which have nothing to do with baseball, but the decided to use him as a symbol. Also the parent company of the Golden Eagles is using Tanaka in thier own business as Rakuten Shouken has assigned him as the image character for their new program, Money TV.
•  Yu Darvish (No-Hitter, 2004 tournament) is another popular figure appearing in many commercials, but the most interesting use of his character is seen by the Japan Water Forum. The organization partnered with Yu Darvish and founded the Yu Darvish Water Fund, which is not only a charity program that he participates in, but a way to raise awareness of the water problems seen throughout the world.
• Toshiya Sugiuchi (No-Hitter, 1998 tournament) lacks in national attention compared to the other two, but is still one of the faces of the Softbank Hawks franchise. The Hawks organized a player recognition day for the fans to receive a original photo album by purchasing game tickets in a certain section. The project will kick off with Sugiuchi being the first player to be recognized.

These players are some that comes to mind that are currently playing in the NPB, had on the WBC team roster and performed well in the Koshien Tournament. Not all stars from the tournament are able to transfer their stardom into a professional career, but receiving the coverage from national media throughout the tournament definitely helps players to be more marketable at the start of their professional careers.

Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium begins its history with the 2009 season. An interesting attempt to not only use the company name, but the slogan associated with the brand name. This makes you wonder if, in the  future, stadiums will have names like NIKE Just Do It Stadium or McDonalds I’m Lovin It Stadium. Fans are able to get a quick glimpse of the stadium with a 360 degree panorama movie on the stadium’s website. The Hiroshima Toyo Carp in the 2009 season look to market their new stadium with ballpark tour opportunities and holding a grand opening event prior to the start of the season.

The Toyo Carp is known for its globalized vision as they were the first Japanese baseball team to establish a baseball academy outside of Japan which started in the Dominican Republic in 1990. The most famous graduate from the academy is current Chicago Cubs outfielder Alfonso Soriano. The Toyo Carp are utilizing the academy in a unique way starting from this year where a Hiroshima City University student will have the opportunity to participate in a six month internship opportunity to experience and learn from a different culture. In 2004, the Toyo Carp also has established a pitching academy in Guandong, China.

The team’s presence on the web has been expanding with a local television station RCC operating a website, RCC Carp Internet Stadium where in-game updates are available with opportunities for fans to interact with others by chatting and asking questions to each other. A mobile website for the Carp has been established for fans to receive updates on their cells regarding their favorite team as well.

The Toyo Carp is a unique team, as they are owned by the city, which is different from the other eleven teams in the NPB. The team entered the Central league to revive the city from the aftermath of World War II. Even though Mazda has become the principal shareholder of the team, they are not associated with the operations and the Toyo Carp is known as a city-owned team of Hiroshima. When their operations were struggling financially in the 1950’s, the community developed a donation project to set up barrels in multiple areas around the stadium to call out for donations, which worked out effectively with the support from the community.

Now the team contributes to activities around the city by organizing a project called P3 Hiroshima; involving the Toyo Carp, Sanfrecce Hiroshima (J-League team), and the symphony orchestra of Hiroshima. The P3 Hiroshima emphisizes on giving Pride, Passion, and Prospects to the city. Some of the activities include the organizations inviting children to their events, professional athletes visiting local schools, and the organization being involved with charities. Toyo Carp will look to give back to the city even more with their brand new stadium in the 2009 season.

A non-profit organization, “Sports Community” is spreading the importance of sports to the Yokohama community. Former players from NPB, former and current players from the Yokohama based industrial league team ENEOS, and former players from women’s softball league make up the teachers in the Sports Community. Their goals are to teach the importance of sportsmanship and the excitement of sports in the right way. They also stress family relationships and communication within the community. Baseball and softball classes are held for the children and also provides family participation events throughout the year.

The Yokohama BayStars are building a community with knowledge of sports management as they build a partnership with Sanno University. Both sides are trying to create a win-win situation as the students of the sport business programs of Sanno University are gaining experience and learning from the real life situations with the Baystars and their minor league team, the Shonan Searex.

Another big part of community service and creating awareness during the BayStars games is blood donations. Before games at certain times of the year, the prefecture’s Red Cross Society comes out to the games and call out for donations before the game. For the participants, the Baystars provide a free sticker and an opportunity to be in the drawing for an on-field event after the game.

There are other projects that the Baystars are involved with such as the Make a Wish to the Stars Project, where the players visit local elementary schools to teach the importance of having a dream to the children. Other members of the Diana team, which is the cheerleading squad, are involved with the Pink Ribbon Project which creates awareness and collects donations for breast cancer. Kanagawa prefecture is second in Japan in deathes due to breast cancer and the Baystars are trying to help the community become aware of the disease.

The BayStars are another team that will have a new look for the 2009 season with their first new home and away uniforms since the 1992 season. The transition comes in the year of  Yokohama harbor celebrating their 150th anniversary since opening the harbor to the world. As the city will be in celebration mode throughout the year, the Baystars hope to add on to the excitement with their new style.