Otani’s Jump To MLB Hits a Snag, Theoretically

Last night, when Jon Heyman tweeted out his report for Fan Rag about the players union balking at the posting system that had been tentatively agreed upon by MLB and NPB for the transfer of Shohei Otani to North America, I decided not to breathlessly rush up a post about it. After all, the Jays aren’t really going to land the next great Japanese superstar, no matter how badly we want to believe in their ability to sell their High Performance department and in Dan Evans’ relationship-building abilities in Japan. Right?

Right???

But, of course, this story is news regardless of just how theoretical its implications are on the Jays. And it kinda only makes you like, and want, Otani more.

“One week after MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball worked out a ‘tentative agreement’ on a $20 million posting system for Japanese two-way megastar Shohei Otani, the players union balked at the arrangement on Wednesday,” Heyman writes. “Meaning there remains a significant hurdle to be cleared before Otani makes his move from the Nippon Ham Fighters to the majors, FanRag Sports has learned.”

“The union actually challenged the future terms covering 2018-2020,” Heyman adds, “but with complaints heard on the player side regarding current rules” — the rules covering Otani — as well.

I think SI’s Jon Tayler hits it on the head right here:

The PA has long been willing to concede on issues relating to players not in the union, which is why we now see a fairly strict bonus pool system for both drafted players and international free agents. Where once there was no limit on the bonuses such players could receive, now there are severe penalties for clubs going too far beyond their bonus pools.

This wasn’t a mistake or an oversight on the union’s part, it was deliberate disregard for non-members right up to the day they actually get to the big leagues. We can see this mindset echoed pretty clearly in the PA’s total lack of solidarity with the game’s severely underpaid minor league players.

What makes Otani different, though, is that this is a player who would not only jump straight into the union, but who would receive a market-setting contract were he to actually hit true free agency. Granted, he might be such unique talent, and coming to MLB at such a young age as to not really be a precedent for anybody. But even so, he would take $200 million or more out of ownership’s pockets and put it straight into the players’ slice of the league’s economic pie — and he’d do so at a time where, as Scott Boras rightly bemoaned this week, teams are making the choice not to spend.

The union tends to like that sort of stuff.

And that’s precisely what would be happening if Otani were 25 years old, and thus no longer covered under the league’s collectively bargained rules for international free agent bonuses. Or if Otani waited two years before making the jump to North America. But, in what must have come as a total shock for Tony Clark and the PA, Otani is genuinely willing to leave literally hundreds of millions of dollars on the table, because he wants to come and try to prove himself on the biggest stage, against the best players in the world. What a wild idea, eh? Someone actually believing that his baseball talents are more than just a marketable skill? Bonkers! (Seriously, though: it’s effing amazing. Sign this man!)

The union should have been able to see this coming, as it’s long been believed that there was a chance that Otani wouldn’t be inclined to stay in Japan until he turned 25. That’s likely why some believe, according to Heyman’s report, that they are merely bluffing here, trying to renegotiate the future agreement as “a ‘backdoor’ attempt to aid Otani, or even a way to ‘discourage’ Otani from coming over now.”

More simply, though, this may just be a way for the union to save face on this. Its members — likely soon to be chief among them Otani himself — won’t exactly be thrilled to see a player of this calibre, and this stature, coming into the league and making such a tiny fraction of what he’s worth. And making so much less than will be paid to the team that sold him off into a bastardized form of MLB free agency.

Maybe I’m wrong, but it sure as hell feels like it’s too late for any of this bullshit to change what’s going to happen — Otani, I’d still wager, will come. I mean, unless it’s somehow made impossible for him to do so, it’s hard to see what could be more discouraging than the riches he’s already likely passing up. And it’s certainly too late for the union to credibly posture like they actually care about the rights of non-members, too. But perhaps Clark and the other union higher-ups can signal to members that their pissing away of Otani’s rights wasn’t as deliberate as it totally, and noticeably weirdly at the time, really was.

I guess we’ll find out soon: