The Rakuten Golden Eagles will try to convince Masahiro Tanaka to stay in Japan for one more season, according to a Sponichi Report passed along by NPB Tracker's Patrick Newman (Twitter link). Taking things a step further, a source indicated over the weekend to George A. King III of the New York Post that Tanaka won't be posted until after the 2014 season.
Of course, the Golden Eagles do not need Tanaka's consent to retain him for another season. However, denying their ace of his wish to come to the United States may not look good to the public and could damage the club's relationship with Tanaka and other players down the line. Last Sunday, Golden Eagles president Yozo Tachibana told reporters that he would likely post Tanaka is he wished to come to MLB.
Reports since then have indicated that the team would struggle with the decision of whether or not to allow Tanaka to come to the Major Leagues or hold him back due to displeasure with the new posting system. As of last Tuesday, Tachibana was planning to speak with Tanaka this week regarding the decision, and assistant GM Aki Sasaki went on record as saying: "I don't know if $20 million is fair value for this kind of trade" (per Yahoo's Jeff Passan).
If there is indeed an announcement that Tanaka will remain in Japan for another season, the starting pitching market should accelerate quickly, with names like Matt Garza, Ervin Santana and Ubaldo Jimenez seeing their stocks rise significantly.
Can’t blame them. They have no reason to post him til next year anyways.
Will the Eagles retain the right to post him next year or is he a free agent able so sign without the posting system?
He will be broken 2 years later
I believe he has 2 years left. So, if they don’t post him this year, they will post him next year with one year left. Makes sense. They felt they’d get more than 20M under the old system, so why let him go now when they can use him for another year? They know after his contract is up he’s all but headed to the majors, so next offseason is probably the time he gets posted for the 20M.
The problem is he might just wait it out and test REAL free agency after 2015, instead of signing after he is posted and the team would lose that 20MM.
Could be a situation much like kicking a field goal on second down. They do have time, but, depending on their risk analysis, they could just go for it now and avoid something going wrong.
whats the difference of posting Tanaka this year or next? Why would the posting system change or be any different next year? Post him now take the $20 mil and say thank you!
Because they can use him this year and make money of him now, and then get the $20 million next year. Since the posting can never go past 20 million now, there is absolutely no benefit to a Japanese team to post their players until the last year of their contracts.
Unintended consequence.
Backfire.
By Calvin Klein
was looking forward to see him pitch :(.
You still can….just would have to wait another year (barring some kind of injury to him, hopefully not)
true enough
A lot can change in a year. Tanaka can get injured, he can decide to stay in Japan, etc. The bottom line is that we don’t get to see the guy play in the US for AT LEAST one year because of an arbitrary rule decided on by MLB against the interests of its fans
Garza, Jimenez, and Santana probably go from making an average of $50 million total to $75 million, give or take.
TBH, I still think both top $50M.
Vargas and Hughes are making $8M a year. All 3 of those guys are at least a #3 if not a #2. Wouldn’t be surprised if they got $15M aav over 4 years.
They will all make 75MM+ Nolasco got 49MM
I think Jimenez will get 4 years, and Garza and Santana will get 5 years.
I think they will all get ~14.5-17 million per year
Naturally, I have a vested interest in seeing Tanaka’s posting delayed (much better timeline for the Red Sox if he’s posted next offseason), so I’m pulling for that.
Tigers need to sign Santana now, then trade Porcello to NY for Gardner and RP Robertson. both teams use surplus to get what they need and Yankees can still sign Tanaka if he gets posted and will need only one other starter if he doesn’t.
I really think calling Robertson surplus is a bit of a stretch. He projects as the Yankees closer next year.
No doubt he goes to America. Why not?
My guess is that the Eagles efforts to persuade him to stay in Japan will not be limited to saying please.
Ya I stay in Japan Your guess really right
Great point Yoda
That’s fun!! lol May the force be with him!
Really hope he stays in Japan for a year so the Sox can possibly get in on this.
I guess the Yankees aren’t going to pick up another pitcher if that’s the case. I don’t see them being that involved with the trio of “top pitchers” on the free agent market and I don’t see them finding a fit for a trade partner.
Better luck next year I suppose, but with the way they abused his arm this past year…not sure how I feel about this come next year.
They’d have to unless they trust their young ones. But their young ones will probably take up the last spot (a mix of Phelps, Pineda, Warren, etc.). One more SP, whether it be Tanaka, one of the names listed above, or even just an average FA pitcher, and their rotation should be complete. Not a great rotation but good enough to compete.
I’m actually more worried about their bullpen.
That would certainly increase the interest in trade candidates too. I would assume that more teams would be in on Price and Samardzija, and more would be willing to meet a higher asking price than before.
you already know boss. Theo and Jed are doing their best Mr.Burns impression… “excellent”
They should make $20 million the max bid, but you should also not get that back, and the Japanese team gets to keep all bids.
imo they should do one of two things, either the team gets 10% of the player’s contract as an incentive or you lower the posting to 10 million max and the team gets all the posting money.
So, if 20 teams bid, they keep 400M? Yeah okay…
Maybe keeping like 2 million from the max bid so the club gets 18 million back and Japan’s teams still make good profit.
Actually this makes a decent amount of sense, and would probably have satisfied Rakuten enough.
the problem with this is that the SYSTEM isn’t desiged for one player, but rather the league as a whole. While that would help with this one instance, it would be a HUGE hinderance for lesser players down the line.
That is also not how the new system works. Teams do not offer up to $20 million. The Japanese club sets their posting fee (with a max of $20M), then any of the 30 clubs can negotiate with the player knowing they must pay the posting fee if they sign him.
I would say this is for only a team that bids at the maximum
another unintended consequence: Scherzer, Shields, bailey, Kershaw, lester all free agents next season and its doubtful any but Kershaw get extended. and I’m not sure kershaw doesn’t test the market anyway…. Tanaka goes from being the top pitcher available to maybe top five at that point….
Cliff Lee probably picks up a lot more interest now as well.
Josh Johnson, Masterson, Peavy, and De La Rosa as well.
Of those five, only Bailey and probably Lee are the only ones who would actually be traded prior to the start of the season. Scherzer, Shields, and Kershaw aren’t going anywhere.
Actually depending on their finances I can buy the Royals extending Shields.
When have you ever seen AAVs go down on top line pitching? Even if some of those names go on the market next season, Tanaka will be the youngest (along with Kershaw) FA on the market and one of the handful under 30. Kershaw will probably set the market at an obscene AAV ($25-30M) so I can only see that helping Tanaka.
How about this for a crazy idea you add two divisions of all japanese teams you call them i Japan AL and Japan NL and of course they have their own farm system in a Japanese minor leauge. Of course you have the problem of teams traveling from the east coast to Japan so you would have some schedling issues but overall i think that it would be great for the development of Sports in Human history crazy i know.
Instead of Japan, why not just add Cuban and Dominican teams.
i mean they could do that too but i doubt the cuban government goes for it and if they do cuba and domincan republic really don’t have enough of a population or major city for that matter to support more than one team at the mlb level while in japan you could probably add a full division.
I think a Mexican and a Puerto Rican team would be very successful.
For the last 2 seasons before the Expos officially moved MLB experimented by having the Expos play some of their season in San Juan. It was supposedly successful or at least more successful than having a team in Montreal. But ultimately it was decided DC was a better landing spot. Unless the league expands again or they get tired of low attendance in Tampa or Miami I don’t see a move outside the states again any time soon.
attendance was better, but i think it wasn’t seen as a long-term viable thing due to the fact that tickets had to be so much cheaper and the payroll of the team would be pretty tiny.
that might all be different with new revenue sharing based on the national contracts and bigger regional networks, but overall Puerto Rico is about 1/4 the economy of the US… so it’d be tough to maintain a Major League standard there.
Then again it couldn’t be worse than the Astros the last few years.
No team wants a 17hr flight to/from Japan multiple times a year.
It’s bad enough with the whole east coast teams having to do a full run of the entire West division’s worth of teams in one hellish road trip as they do right now, imagine if you had to do your Japan games all in one go while tacking on the California/Seattle/Texas/etc series? Ugh.
Plus there’s the quality issue and it all adds up to maybe it’d be cute to have the Japanese champ play the MLB champ in a 5-game series after the World Series or something for a real “world” series, but regular season no way.
He’s accomplished everything in Japan already. “Nothing to aim” means slump for him. Let him be here facing MLs.
As a Sox fan, I hope he stays but also because I think the new deal is terrible for NPB. The incentive is destroyed for the owners to give their stars to America.
It’s funny that people are saying that the Golden Eagles would get heat for not posting him. A star MLB player would catch a lot of heat for demanding a trade these days like Darren Oliver tried to do last year. The days of players like Griffey being granted sentimental trades are long over. Baseball is a business and the Eagles have the rights to a star pitcher. I say keep him.
His arm will fall of by then.