Major League Baseball will make sure Masahiro Tanaka's Japanese team, the Rakuten Golden Eagles, does not receive more than its $20MM posting fee as a result of Tanaka's departure to the US, Bill Shaikin and Dylan Hernandez of the Los Angeles Times report. That means that Tanaka cannot donate money to Rakuten.
Rakuten's president, Yozo Tachibana, had previously said that Tanaka intended to give money to Rakuten to improve its stadium. Rakuten has reportedly investigated adding a dome. Tanaka would, according to Tachibana, "cooperate and donate . . . starting with improving the environment for the players and to make sure it’s the kind of stadium that can be loved by [local] fans."
Such a donation would violate the agreement between MLB and NPB, which forbids NPB teams from receiving any money beyond a player's posting fee. "We are intent on enforcing all the provisions of the agreement," says MLB spokesperson Pat Courtney.
**Rakuted** has reportedly investigated adding a dome.
Why?
Well lets do the thing someone suggested where the team that wins Tanaka has to buy a scrub player from the Eagles also, so they get 40 million instead of 20 million
lol i assume you’re joking, and not missing the giant flaw in that plan
I figured that Rakuten was shaking down Tanaka which was what the whole delay was about. However, I am pretty sure there are ways for Tanaka to donate the money through a 3rd party, and you don’t want to mess with the Amazon of Japan.
Eagles should pull back from posting Tanaka then, just say something about his physical is bad
Not surprised that this is coming up, nor that MLB doesn’t like it, others floated a solution like this when they thought his team wouldn’t post him. But how long will MLB actually/legally maintain the authority to block that? Some guys want to give back. If he still wants to donate some money, say, 10 years down the road, it’s hard to imagine MLB would have the authority to block that.
Exactly. Requiring him to kickback is one thing, but ultimately the money belongs to the player.
So wait, they want Tanaka to “donate” money for stadium improvements because the Rakuten owner is too cheap to pay for it himself? That’s some Yakuza nonsense right there.
Or they just keep his rights that they still own for 2 more years … you know like the players that MLB own the rights to till they finish arbitration. .
It’s not clear whether his team is demanding any money from him to post. He doesn’t have to do it, though I wouldn’t be surprised if Tanaka offered to do that as an unofficial incentive. When they first promised to post him they thought they were looking at $50mil+ for him. When you’re going to be limited to 40% of what you thought having second thoughts about it doesn’t make them “cheap”. The circumstances changed in a major way.
It’s called extortion. Rakuten likely said if you don’t agree we won’t post you. They haggled for a couple of weeks on how much, and then the deal was done.
Yeah, if that’s how it went down it certainly would be extortion. I’m not saying that’s impossible. I’m saying that right now there is no proof whatsoever that extortion is happening here, you can’t just assume he is being coerced, there’s no evidence of a *demand* that he agree to give x as a condition of being posted. They have posted him which means he is a free man. Even if they did work out something like that in a back room, Tanaka would still be free to turn his back on them because legally they can’t compel him to do anything once he signs a deal.
That’s not extortion. It’s negotiation.
Extortion????? Seriously? It’s called inducement… Bargaining… Business. Under your strange definition of extortion, every business deal involving an individual would be illegal coercion
MLB owners are far wealthier than the Rakuten owner. I mean Tanaka would have earned 8 million if he stayed in Japan, compared to 100+ million in the US.
Japanese teams are owned by huge conglomerates who own the teams to promote their business. Rakutens owner is the Amazon of Japan. The companies revenues are around 5 billion with over 10,000 employees worldwide. MLB as a whole has revenues under 7 billion. The team is a plaything for them
Yeah, what gives, why don’t they get the taxpayers to fund stadiums instead?!
Were not dealing with the kind of money MLB has. Tanaka will be paid more this year than the whole team he’s leaving. Donating to them would be much like giving back to your college after making it big.
Exactly. There’s no way any amount Tanaka would donate could exceed an amount the owner couldn’t already afford. If Tanaka wants to donate to his old team after his playing career, then that’s a decision he can make.
Hm.. If its a donation, I think it’s bogus. But if its a forced “donation” then I think it’s also bogus… but in an entirely different way.
MLB can not tell players how to spend their money.
No, but they could pull out of the agreement and just sign any Japanese player who wants to come to the MLB regardless of their NPB obligations, making any Japanese player not under contract a free agent. Not good for the NPB.
There are many ways for Tanaka to pay the exit fee that MLB could not trace to Rakuten the team. I don’t think MLB really cares about this if its kept quiet so they are basically telling Rakuten to keep any such deals secrets. .
Not sure how thorough they will be, but it will become oddly suspicious if they build a dome soon after saying they didn’t have the money for it.
I understand they do have the money for it if they really wanted, but still suspicious.
After Yozo Tachibana delighted the media with news that his prized young pitcher, Masahiro Tanaka, would cooperate and donate money to improve the environment for players and fans, he retired to his home, pulled a fake book in his library which opened up a secret wall in his study. A tired, weary and dust-covered Japanese family squinted at the modicum of sunlight that gleaned in their eyes. Tachibana sternly nodded to the eldest man of the group and said, “As soon as your son donates his share, you are free to go.”
There’s had to be an exception made to the Rakuten Eagles, since their very stadium was most severely damaged by the Fukushima Earthquake. I couldn’t even imagine how the rest of the area has held up, there’s so much that needs to be rebuilt after the 9.1 earthquake and tsunami. A player should be able to do whatever he wants with his money.
He should be able to. But he shouldn’t be made to by his former employer. If its all about the tsunami and quake, how about donating directly to those causes, not back to his former employer who may/may not do something.
The player can. MLB is taking no action against Tanaka. If he wants to give the money to a company with 5 billion in earnings he can, or he can donate to a local charity for the homeless. He obviously has been forced into this deal in order to get posted.
He hasn’t been “forced” into anything. Let’s put this back into perspective here. Tanaka is not entitled to be posted. If Tanaka made a deal to induce Rakuten to post him, that is not coercive on the part of either party
It would violate the explicit terms of the agreement between MLB and NPB.
That is probably true, but it does not undermine my point. The Golden Eagles had the right to simply not post Tanaka. If Tanaka was proposed an arrangement to post, even if it was in violation of the agreement, it does not mean Tanaka was coerced or forced into anything. He jumped at the opportunity to be posted. Period.
The exception that should be made is that a player should be able to spend his money exactly how he wants to, and MLB should mind its own business and stop playing world police
Ha, good luck with that.
$20mil isn’t enough to make improvements to the stadium? It’s no $50mil that the Fighters got for Darvish, but it’s still $20mil.
The stadium hasn’t been in used since the earthquake, and this was before Tanaka was ever posted, so I’m pretty sure the damage must have been substantial. The whole area was hit with at least 10-100 billion in damages (I’m not sure how to quantify in dollars, the cost of having an entire city flooded), I’m sure the people would want as much as they could get.
Essentially divide the amount of Yen by 100 and you get dollars. Sure the exchange rate fluctuates, but it’s close to that rate most of the time. Current rate is 105.14 yen = $1
Seems like it’ll be hard to prove that Tanaka is getting pressure from the Golden Eagles to give them loyalty money for jumping ship, but I think the MLB is showing tough love towards Tanaka by banning any “donation” as it’d be an obvious ploy to get more than the original posting fee.
They don’t want to set a bad financial precedent now because hes the first player to do this and it’s so high profile, that’s probably part of it too. I think they are more focused on defending a system mechanism dozens of players will go through. They are trying to close a loophole.
I admit it makes it way too cheap for MLB teams to abuse the Japanee majors as a more expensive version of a farm system, but it’s kind of impossible to convince all these Japanese players to not get themselves posted when the RECORD price in Japan is less than $8MM and a mediocre MLB player can make that kind of money in their second or third round of arbitration.
The posting agreement between the two leagues explicitly prohibits kickbacks.
The article said that a Japanese player giving a donation to their former team is a violation to the agreement between the MLB and the NPB. You don’t want a Japanese player having to give a kickback to get posted.
This new agreement, made in a hurry, is so flawed… Pathetic. Next time, think before acting.
It is not flawed. It does exactly what they intended it to do. With this in place no player believes that they will be posted till they have one year left. Tanaka was the one big player who was going under the old rules but should have been kept under the new ones.
Good point, makes sense in a way.
Really though, instead of doing it out in the open like he announced, why not get paid and then make a donation at a charity or park ceremony day? They can’t stop anyone from using their own money to give to charity. Heck, I’d start a US based non profit for him and send a generous check to the Rakuten Eagles.
I wouldn’t call the Rakuten Eagles a “charity.” How much money can Tanaka send them towards a dome???
Its not about stopping Tanaka from giving, its about stopping Rakuten from accepting. There is no way to do either thing, and MLB knows it. Their message is simply to make these deals in secret and keep them secret.
Their only leverage is to back out of the posting agreement due to a breach of the agreement by Rakuten. That will be enough to get Rakuten to tone it down due to pressure from other NPB teams who want to keep the agreement.
On second thought, maybe they want MLB to back out of the deal since they don’t like the new one too much.
MLB To Prevent Tanaka From Donating To Old Team
I am curious how the MLB will do this, the MLB still finds or catches players using steroids. They can’t prevent players from cheating, so how are they going to prevent Tanaka from sending money back to his old team?
I mean is Selig going to place a tracking device on every dollar in Tanaka’s wallet or bank account? I mean seriously!
The whole idea of an individual “donating” to a for-profit business is exceedingly fishy. Everyone knows this is Rakuten trying to get around an agreement NPB made, and the ink is barely dry on it to boot.
MLB makes their lions share of money. Who cares if anyone donates back, they will pillage Japan again for talent
But what about when MLB paid a criminal Tony Bosch for documents in cash? That’s fine for Selig to do I guess.
and what about an MLB team agreeing to post-fee another 20 million on a second Rakuten scrub, then signing him for an above-slot type deal in order to circumvent the rules? maybe the 2nd player is rep’d by Tanaka’s agent so the agent cashes in, Rakuten cashes in and the MLB team in this example gets the player they want and flaunts the rules to do so.
My guess is, if you thought of this evasion, then MLB did as well, and the rules prohibit it.
What incentive would an MLB team have for doing that? The player is the one with the option of declining the contract after being posted not the posting team.
I understand that the MLB wants to protect players from being forced into agreements with teams but this seems unfortunate (yet probably necessary). It’s not like Tanaka is just blindly handing Rakuten money. It sounds like he has specific things that he has in mind that he would like the money to go to that would benefit the players and fans. I have no issue with a player giving back to the fans through his old organization, or trying to improve conditions for his former teammates and peers
Coming soon: In a totally unrelated move, the Yankees have agreed to buy a 1% stake in the Rakuten team for $50 million…
Maybe Tanaka could avoid the tax issue by setting up a foundation and calling the donation a charitable donation. It would be donated to a team hit hard by the earthquake/tsunami to improve a stadium that was damaged, so I would imagine it would qualify as charity, if not in the US then in Japan. His US taxes will likely offset some part of his Japanese tax obligation due to a tax treaty so hard to say what Tanaka pays, and in any case, he likely has considered the overall costs before agreeing ..
Hard to say if Rakuten would have any tax burden in receiving the donation. Not sure Rosenthal is familiar with Japanese tax laws or if Rakuten has any losses to carry forward, or if they are even profitable. Corporations dont pay income tax, just profit tax. Owned by a 5 billion a year company they have a team of lawyers who would seek the most efficient way to handle the donation.
In any even, even if it is less efficient, its not like MLB has left them any choice. Tanaka and Rakuten can easily bypass MLB scrutiny by going through 3rd parties.
I often wondered if Daisuke shook down Seibu when Seibu got a 50 million dollar posting fee and left Daisuke with only 53 million in salary. Perhaps he threatened to return to Seibu unless they gave him a piece of the posting pie. Tables are turned now.
This is pointless by MLB. A player has the right to do with HIS cash he is paid as the player deems fit. It matters not to me as a fan if he helps an old team or a cancer research foundation. His cash his choice.