NPB Tracker

Update: $6m figure was later contradicted. Please see this post.

Sanspo is reporting that Red Sox VP for international scouting Craig Shipley spent 1 hour 50 minutes negotiating with Junichi Tawaza, resulting in a $6M contract offer. No word on whether it’s a major league deal or not.

The Yomiuri has a brief mention of an offer from the Mariners, including appearance and innings-based incentives. If that’s true, I hope those incentives are a few years down the road as this is a 22 year-old kid who’s already been overworked by his industrial league team. The Indians and Tigers meetings with Tazawa made the Japanese news, but so far I haven’t seen any reports of contract offers from either team.

Tazawa’s Eneos career ended with a loss to JR Tokai in the final tournament of the amateur season. After pitching shutouts in the first two rounds of the tourney, Tazawa entered the semi-final game in the 7th inning with runners on first and second and the game tied 2-2. Tazawa gave up a single that scored what proved to be the winning run. The victorious JR Tokai went on to lose to Toyota in the final. (Here’s the Kyodo English-language writeup)

In the spirit of keepin’ it real, here’s a great article from Jim Allen, and a great response from Aaron Shinsano of East Windup Chronicle.

Japanese news from the usual sources for today.

Japanese Articles:

• The Indians have reportedly gotten into the Junichi Tazawa race despite Mark Shapiro. Meanwhile, Tazawa’s final tournament as an amateur begins on the 17th. He’s not hiring an agent and plans to negotiate during the tournament, and will be eligible to sign after it ends on the 24th. 
• Kenshin Kawakami filed for free agency, after pausing for a bit. “I want to choose the team that needs me the most and the team that I feel like I really want to play for”. 
• Orix is working on a contract with Baltimore AAA righty Jon Leicester, and has added Richard Hidalgo to their list of acquisition targets. Hidalgo’s name emerging is interesting — he hasn’t played in the bigs since 2005 and is currently in the Venezuelan Winter League. 
• Former “Face of the BayStars” Takuro Ishii has agreed to a contract with the Hiroshma Carp. Hiroshima also signed 4th-round draft pick Son-Hyon Shin to an entry-level contract with a ï¿¥20,000,000 ($200K) signing bonus.
• Hiram Bocachica is returning to Seibu, saying that game 7 of the Japan Series was the best day in his baseball career. 
• Softbank is going after an MLB free agent this off-season. No word on who they might be targeting, but they have 10 guys on their list. Softbank overpaid for Tony Bautista a few years ago; I hope they do better this time.

Four Japanese Articles to share today:

• Add the Softbank Hawks to the list of NPB teams interested in Nelson Cruz. It turns out that Softbank was trying to get Cruz last summer at the trading deadline, which I speculated about a few weeks ago. The Hawks are also interested in Padres reliever Brian Falkenborg.
• Indians GM Mark Shapiro expects the bidding for Junichi Tazawa to reach $7M. The Indians are not interested in Tazawa, nor are the Yankees or Diamondbacks.
• Shingo Takatsu is hoping to play another year in Korea. Shingo saved 8 games with an 0.86 era in 18 games for the Woori Heroes this season.
• The Hiroshima Carp’s new stadium will be known as Mazda Zoom-Zoom Stadium Hiroshima. Kind of a mouthful, I wonder if they could’ve just gone with one “zoom”.

Sponichi is reporting that Texas is getting into the mix on Junichi Tazawa. The Rangers are rushing Pacific scouting director Jim Colborn over to Japan to visit the highly touted pitcher. Colborn was quoted as saying he hadn’t gotten to see any Japanese players this year due to taking over the Rangers’ bullpen coach job mid-season. Meanwhile, Nikkan Sports is reporting that Colborn will also looking at acquiring Kenshin Kawakami and Koji Uehara.

Texas had Japanese relievers Kazuo Fukumori and Yuginaga Maeda at thier AAA affiliate this year, but neither made an impact at the MLB level.

Though Junichi Tazawa might be the first consensus NPB first round draft pick-caliber player to jump directly to MLB, he’s not the first to have considered it. And even when he signs, he won’t be the first amateur out of Japan to sign with an MLB organization.

The guys listed below have all either negotiated or signed with MLB teams before playing pro ball in Japan. None of the players listed elicited the kind of reaction Tazawa got, but none of them pursued an MLB deal with the same level of fanfare that Tazawa has now. 

Koji Uehara: came close to signing with the Angels out of college, but backed off because of language challenges and having to start in the minors. Went on to have immediate success in NPB, and subsequently make numerous requests to be posted. Finally coming to MLB this off-season. 

Hayato Terahara: taken directly from Gary Garland’s excellent site:

Dodgers V.P. Tommy Lasorda personally tried to sign the 18 year old high school phenom with a 98mph fastball, Hayato Terehara, laying on the blather very thick as only Lasorda can. Terahara ultimately decided to remain in Japan and was drafted by the Daiei Hawks after a lottery drawing between the Hawks and three other Japanese teams.

I was in Japan when this happened and while it was reported in the media,  Terahara didn’t really seem interested in signing with the Dodgers. Terahara spent several ineffective years with the Hawks, then got traded to Yokohama where he immediately blossomed into a frontline pitcher.

GG Sato: signed with the Phillies after college and played a couple of years in their system. Drafted by Seibu afterward with a late round pick and eventually became a pretty good player. Kind of a late bloomer.

Kazuhito Tadano: went undrafted in NPB because of his appearance in an adult film while he was in college, but the Indians were willing to give him a contract. Tadano pitched briefly in the show but never really did well enough in AAA to get an extended shot in the majors. Nippon Ham drafted him with their first pick in 2007, and he’s back in Japan now. 

Sho Nakata: drew interest from the Twins, and the Mariners reportedly had a $3M offer ready for him (can’t find the link now). Chose to enter into the NPB draft and was selected by Nippon Ham. Just wrapped up his first year with the Fighters’ farm team.

Robert Boothe: Grew up in Japan with an American father and Japanese mother. Boothe pitched in college but didn’t have must statistical success. Still, the five NPB teams that were said to be interested in drafting him backed off when he decided to sign with the Dodgers.

There’s a number of other lesser-known Japanese-born players playing affiliated ball in the US. JapaneseBallPlayers.com has a pretty comprehensive list of guys that are currenlty on US minor league rosters, as well as some notable former players.

As you no doubt know by now, Junichi Tazawa went unselected in the recent NPB draft, clearing the way for him to sign with an MLB organization. While official negotiations reportedly won’t start until Nov 24 or so, Tazawa is meeting with representatives from the Mariners and Braves on Tuesday. I’ve picked up on about six teams interested in Tazawa, with the most recent addition to the mix being the Phillies.

Update, November 1 afternoon: Okay, it’s raining out here in Silicon Valley so I might keep going with this. Here are the teams that I’ve seen reported in the media as having interest in Tazawa:

• Boston
• Atlanta
• Seattle
• Pittsburgh
• Detroit
• Chicago Cubs
• Philadelphia

Japanball.com has the Kyodo version of the story I published above.

The draft has come and gone, and thanks to a late night in the office I got to follow it live a little bit. I’m not going to write up the whole thing, because Deanna has already done an excellent job of that. Instead, let’s take a quick look at where the guys I’ve written about landed:

Hisayoshi Chono: Backed off his demand to be selected by the Giants at the last minute; was subsequently selected by the Chiba Lotte Marines. We’ll see if he signs.

Yi-Jie Hsiao: Selected by Hanshin with their first round pick. Hsiao was actually Hanshin’s third “first” choice, but they lost out on their first two.

Krissada Shirakura: Not selected. It’s on to the industrial leagues, or perhaps a pro league outside of Japan for Shirakura.

Son-Hyon Shin: Taken by Hiroshima in the fourth round.

Rafael Fernandez: As expected, snagged by Yakult with an instructional player pick.

Yoshinori Yamarin: Not selected, even as an instructional player. Will he sign a minor league deal with the Braves?

Hayato Doue: Drafted with Softbank’s final instructional round pick.

Junichi Tazawa: NPB teams respected his wishes not to be drafted. I thought someone might take a flier on him with a late-round pick, but it didn’t happen.

One unfortunate result of the draft is that the excellent Draft de Anbo site is down. The site slowed down to a crawl during the draft, so I guess they violated their host’s traffic policies. The site is still down, but I hope to see it back soon.

By now this is old news, but this is one of those posts that I started drafting, got interrupted, and haven’t had the time to get back to until now. Better late than never.

So, to get caught up, “the Tazawa penalty” is a new rule banning Japanese players who have opted out of the NPB draft to sign internationally from joining an NPB team for up to three years after leaving their international organization. The idea is make top Japanese amateurs think twice about bypassing NPB for MLB by eliminating the assumption that they have an easy path back.

Though I haven’t found anything concrete on this, I’m guessing the rule will be in effect from Tazawa forward, so Robert Boothe shouldn’t have anything to worry about if he wants to pitch in Japan in the future.

Tazawa has commented on the situation: “Personally I only thought about going to America. I wasn’t thinking about the next person, so this is something I have to apologize for”.

It feels like this is kind of a sour grapes move by the NPB establishment and they’ll eventually get over it. There is some historic precedence to suggest that they will: the cases of Hideki Irabu, Kazuhito Tadano, Hideo Nomo and Mac Suzuki.

Irabu is perhaps the most informative example. Prior to being a bust with the Yankees, Irabu was under contract with the San Diego Padres, whom he refused to play for. At the time, the NPB establishment felt that they had been embarrassed by Irabu’s antics and said that he wouldn’t be allowed back in, but Hanshin signed him for the 2003 season. He won the fans over with a strong start.

Kazuhito Tadano was a top college pitcher who went undrafted because of his appearance in an adult film. The story was that NPB teams were worried about their images, but a couple of years and MLB appearances later, the Nippon Ham Fighters had gotten over it and selected Tadano in the second round of the NPB draft.

There was severe backlash against Hideo Nomo after he pulled his retirement stunt to make it to MLB, but it didn’t take too long for him to turn that around and he’s now widely recognized as one of most significant figures in Japanese baseball over the last 20 or so years, along wth Ichiro. I’m not aware of similar backlash against Mac Suzuki, but when he decided he was ready to move to NPB at least two teams (Yakult and Orix) were interested in drafting him, and Orix did draft and sign him.

So my gut feeling, and my hope, is that this new rule basically amounts to an idle threat. Instead of threatening Japanese nationals like this, I’m hoping to see a little more effort to make signing and playing in NPB more appealing, and at the same time, investing a more in developing young talent, particularly young international talent.

By now it’s common knowledge among baseball fans that Junichi Tazawa has elected to forego a career in Nippon Pro Baseball and jump right in to an MLB organization. The Red Sox, Pirates, Braves, Mariners and Cubs have been publicly linked with Tazawa, with Boston considered the front runner to land him. Based on the hype he’s getting I’d expect him to get a contract in the first round draft pick range.

Tazawa’s announcement has predictably send a shock wave through Japanese baseball. Meetings are underway — so far the 12 NPB have met amongst themselves and with three amateur baseball bodies; and NPB commissioner Ryozo Kato is meeting with Bud Selig on September 16 in New York (correction 9/16: representatives from the two commissioners offices are meeting today, a meeting between the actual commissioners is on the cards for later). My impression is that the Japanese baseball institution is more intent on preventing this development from setting a precedent than it is blocking this individual player’s move to the US.

Much of the discussion seems to be around the uneven playing field between NPB and MLB teams in pursuit of Tazawa. Tazawa is subject to the NPB draft, while he’s eligible to sign as a free agent with MLB teams. This puts NPB at a considerable disadvantage: NPB teams can only offer draft picks a maximum bonus of about $1M, while MLB teams aren’t bound to a limit; NPB scouts are limited in when they can talk to amateur players while MLB scouts don’t have to comply to such limits. Like MLB, NPB has a draft system to try and fairly distribute talent among the teams. It would be a shame to see that effort undermined, and it seems worthwhile to revisit the rules for teams scouting players subject to the NPB draft.

It’s important to note that the news here is not necessarily the MLB interest, but that Tazawa has chosen to forgo the NPB draft. NPB and MLB have had an unwritten agreement in place since 1962 that prohibits MLB teams from signing Japanese NPB draft candidates, but that hasn’t stopped MLB teams from trying to sign top Japanese amateurs in the past. Tazawa is the first to accept the overtures. So while MLB teams have mostly honored the letter of the gentleman’s agreement, they haven’t entirely honored the spirit of it. It’s only now that a top talent has been lured away that the NPB institution is getting upset.

Another thing to consider is that each year MLB teams sign much of the top young amateur players out of Taiwan and Korea, and no one bats an eye. Why is that? MLB’s interest in the players from these countries is a validation of the talent that’s there, but I think it impedes the development of local leagues and deprives fans of seeing some of their countries’ top players compete in international competition. Japan has managed to retain its top talent and making them stars at home, which is one of the reasons NPB is a strong league.

Tim Dierkes included my comments that a Japanese team could go after a guy like Aaron Crow or Pedro Alvarez in his most recent post on the Tazawa situation. At this point it would be an obvious retaliation move but under the right circumstances it would make sense for both sides. The player would get a viable alternative to MLB — playing in Japan in front of tens of thousands of fans every night, for millions of dollars. The team would get a talented player that they could eventually send back to MLB via the posting system (Ramon Ramirez is a non-Japanese player who was developed and posted by the Hiroshima Carp).

Obviously there is a lot left to happen before the situation is resolved, but Tazawa has already gotten his name in the history books just by announcing his decision. This development might bring about change to bring NPB and MLB together, or it might drive them apart. I’m hoping for the former.

After a short break from writing, I’m back with a few highlights from my weekend reading. I’ve been enjoying Sanspo’s Baseball Photo Ranking lately.

The next big piece of content I have on tap for NPB Tracker is (surprise) an essay on the Junichi Tazawa situation. Look out for that in the next day or two.

Japanese Articles:

• Construction of the new Hiroshima Citizen’s Stadium is underway, and you can follow its progress on this blog. Thanks to Erik Schullstrom for the link.
• Nippon Ham Fighters starter Ryan Glynn has a 28-inning scoreless streak going.
• Who says Japanese players don’t play hard? Here’s a shot of Yakult’s Masakazu Fukukawa taking out Yomiuri’s Shigeyuki Furuki on a slide into second base.
• Yokohama’s teenage righthander Atori made his first career appearance and hit 94 mph on the gun.
• The Eneos Industrial League team will be travelling to Brazil to play a seven-game exhibition series with Brazil’s national team to commerate 100 years of Japanese immigration to Brazil. I think this is great, I’d love to see baseball expand more deeply into Brazil.
• Obligatory Junichi Tazawa item: here’s a blogger who couldn’t care less if Tazawa skips NPB. “A guy who wants to go to the Majors can go. That’s it.” Well said.
• Hanshin has won a number of games in walk-off fashion recently, here are some YouTube clips of the team’s win on Sept 11: Jeff Williams shuts down Yakult in the top of the ninth, K’ing Norichika Aoki for the final out, Shinjiro Hiyama and Ikuro Katsuragi start the comeback, Akihiro Yano ties the game, and Makoto Imaoka wins it.

English Articles:

• Wayne Graczyk gives us a little insight into what makes fireballing Giants closer Marc Kroon tick.