Darvish Signs for 2009
Yu Darvish has renewed his contract for ï¿¥270m ($2.7m), a ï¿¥70m ($700k) increase over 2008. Although Darvish was expected to hit the ï¿¥300m ($3m) mark, he still set a record high for 5th-year players. “The team didn’t win and I didn’t earn any personal titles,” explained Darvish.
NPB players are under team control for a minimum of eight years, and pre-free agent players sign get multi-year contracts (not that I’ve heard of anyway). So each offseason players and teams negotiate salaries for the upcoming season. It’s a little like the arbitration process in MLB, but players’ salaries will decrease after a bad year, and there’s never a third party mediator involved. Players who hold out sometimes pay their own way to spring training.
01/12/2008 at 4:25 am Permalink
I look at a figure like $2.7 million and I think…that’s pretty good to play baseball, even if it isn’t astronomical like what the top starter (Sabathia) in MLB will get.
But then I consider the idea of a player going into an arbitration hearing alone (let alone having to pay their way to spring training if they piss the wrong people off) and I think…what an f-ing joke.
01/12/2008 at 8:47 am Permalink
Yep, I agree with you there. Some of the players have agents, most choose not to. The Yomiuri won’t negotiate with agents; Uehara had one years ago and they worked around it by changing his status to ‘lawyer’. Holdouts paying their way to camp… players don’t get to attend spring training at all if they’re not signed to a contract.
How does this process work in Korea?
01/12/2008 at 5:41 pm Permalink
Similar. My guess is that Korean players have even less representation than their Japanese counterparts. I’ve never heard of them making players pay their own way to spring training, but I wouldn’t doubt it. I also think they’re sometimes hit by coaches and older players, but that’s another issue entirely.