NPB Tracker

I was about to start some research on how the NPB teams utilize the money gained from the posting fee, but then I came across to the perfect article written by David Waldstein of the New York Times, Seibu Lions’ Porcelain and Plastic Memorial to Matsuzaka: Plush Bathrooms.

It seems easy to say that the Seibu Lions have been the most effective team in utilizing the posting fee with Daisuke Matsuzaka as they won the 2008 Japan Series without Daisuke. On the other hand, teams like the Tokyo Yakult Swallows has not been able to recover after allowing Akinori Iwamura to leave and Hanshin Tigers seem to always be missing the inning-eating starter that they had in Kei Igawa. The Seibu Lions are one of the few teams that have generated a win-win situation using the posting fee system.

So what did Seibu Lions do with the $51 million posting fee (about $25M after taxes)…  According to Waldstein the fee was mainly used to reconstruct their home stadium, the Seibu Dome. The Lions…

• Constructed new concession stands and seating
• Resurfaced the playing field
• Installed an enormous video scoreboard
• Built magnificent bathrooms with electronically warmed toilet seats

The young pitching talents of the Seibu Lions were able to pick things up where Daisuke left and become the NPB Champions for the 2008 season. Even though they allowed their superstar to leave for MLB, the Lions were able to set up a win-win situation in the aftermath. So do you think the Lions were better off posting Matsuzaka to the MLB?

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).

This is a call for expertise from NPB Tracker readers. I’m interested in learning more about the following two topics:

• the current state of baseball in Brazil
• the Netherlands’ Honkbal Hoofdklasse league

I don’t know of any English-language resources, except for the excellent mister-baseball.com for the latter topic. If any readers out there know about these topics and wouldn’t mind sharing your knowledge with the site, please leave a comment or shoot me an email at npbtracker@gmail.com.

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.

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.

Here’s more on some of the minor leaguers that I was following in the offseason:

• Kazuhiro Takeoka -> training in Arizona, hoping to catch on with a team as the season progresses. 
• Takateru Iyono -> didn’t catch on with an MLB organization; signed with the Brother Elephants of Taiwan.
• Tatsuya Ozeki -> flunked his audition with the Rockies, back in Japan blogging.
• Michinao Yamamura -> looks like he was in camp with the independent Calgary Vipers; not sure if he made the team.
• Koichi Misawa -> Unknown; all I could find was that he won’t be back with Northern League’s RailCats in 2009.
• Yosuke Kawaguchi -> this guy wasn’t on my radar at all, but two seperate readers pointed out that he’s signed with the Yuma Scorpions of the independent Golden League (thanks to readers Dave and Patrick P for the tip).

All these guys, with the exception of Misawa, played in NPB last season.