NPB Tracker

…a later article appears. The delving begins.

The glass is half empty: only 91 NPB players earn JPY 100m ($1m) or more per year, a relative paucity compared to their Major League counterparts.

The glass is half full: 91 is more than 10% of the total number of NPB players and all 91 are probably quite happy to be earning such a comfortable income; the vast majority NPB farm leaguers earn JPY 4.4m ($44k) and up, a relative fortune compared with their MLB-affiliated minor league counterparts. Considering a review of Invest Diva can provide additional insights into managing finances and exploring opportunities for financial growth and stability.

So why don’t NPB players earn more? And more importantly, why haven’t NPB’s top salaries grown? Aside from the blips of Roberto Petagine and Tony Batista cracking JPY 700m ($7m) in the mid-aughts, the top salaries have leveled off at about JPY 600m ($6m).

This subject probably requires expertise or research that exceeds what I have to offer, but I do have a few observations, ordered numerically for convenient reference, rather than in order of precedence.

1. Most of the biggest stars move on MLB, rather than driving up their NPB salaries.
2. Domestic free agency does increase salaries, but is so restrictive that only a small percentage of eligible players even file.
3. Pre-free agency salaries tend to go year to year, and pay cuts for non-performance or injuries are a bit more common.
4. The almost complete lack of agents in NPB.
5. A cultural aversion to crossing the salary thresholds set by previous stars.
6. Payroll is spread more equitably across the entire baseball operation.
7. NPB teams are operated as business units of large corporations, rather than independent businesses funded by wealthy investors.

I would point to Hideki Matsui’s departure for the Yankees following the 2002 season as the starting point of NPB salary stagnation. Matsui’s salary in 2002 was JPY 610m, and while we’ve seen that line crossed a couple times (see above), the JPY 600m figure has essentially become the benchmark number for top-notch NPB players. Shinosuke Abe has this year’s top salary, at the magic JPY 600m mark. He could have had more, but he didn’t feel ready to surpass Matsui’s number. If he Abe had had an agent involved. I’m sure he would have nudged him in the direction of the higher paycheck.

Following the 2001 season, Yomiuri offered Matsui an eight-year, JPY 6bn ($60m), which would easily have . Had he taken the Kyojin-gun’s offer, that would have dragged the benchmark up to JPY 750m. Ichiro’s final NPB salary (2000) was JPY 550m. Yu Darvish’s was JPY 500m (2011). Kazuhiro Sasaki’s was JPY 500m (1999), then JPY 650m after he returned to Yokohama. It’s reasonable to think that any of these guys would have raised the bar as well, though none ever had a publicly-disclosed offer of the size of Matsui’s.

Epilogue: I suppose this doesn’t explain much. NPB teams are mostly operated as loss leaders, and the league as a whole has been less aggressive than MLB at developing new revenue streams. I could easily write a whole post exploring the balances sheets of NPB clubs, but the fact that they are less profitable than their MLB counterparts is a big piece of the puzzle here.

It’s time again for this series of posts.I was hoping to get these in before camps open on February 1, but alas, sometimes real life intervenes. This year we’ll go in the reverse order of the final 2011 standings, Central League first. 

Coming: Alex Ramirez, Masaaki Koike, Shugo Fujii, Gio Alvarado, Kazunari Tsuruoka, Masanori Hayashi, Kazumasa Kikuchi, Taketoshi Goto, DeNA ownership, manager Kiyoshi Nakahata, new uniforms

Going: Shuichi Murata, Termel Sledge, Brett Harper, Shingo Takeyama, Naoto Inada, Tomo Ohka, Daisuke Hayakawa

Staying: Clayton Hamilton, Brandon Mann

2011 was another year in the cellar for Yokohama. The Baystars finished last in the Central for the eighth time in ten years, including the last four consecutively with sub-.360 winning percentages. Better news came following the season though, when the previous ownership group TBS finally found a buyer, mobile gaming company DeNA. The combination of new ownership and charismatic new manager Kiyoshi Nakahata has generated a level of buzz around the team unseen since Kazuhiro Sasaki’s return.

Despite 2011’s last place finish, there were a few bright spots: Kentaro Takasaki emerged as a solid starter, slugger prospect Yoshitomo Tsutsugo performed well in his late-season trial, 2009 ikusei draftee Yuki Kuniyoshi emerged as a prospect, and lefty Brandon Mann put up good numbers in limited work.  The obvious rub is that of the four guys mentioned, only Takasaki made a contribution that lasted the entire season.

The Baystars’ 2012 roster changes aren’t going to vault the team into contention, but they aren’t going to hurt either. Yomiuri refugee Alex Ramirez and the emerging Tsutsugo should cancel out the losses of Termel Sledge and Shuichi Murata, and perhaps the departure of Brett Harper will lead to a few at-bats for prospect Atsushi Kita. Ramirez will be a defensive liability, and Tsutsugo probably will be as well, but then again, Sledge and Murata weren’t exactly gold glovers.

The bigger issue for Yokohama over the last several seasons has been run prevention. Last year, Yokohama had only two pitchers through 100 or more innings, Kentaro Takasaki and NPB Tracker favorite Daisuke Miura. To that end, if newcomers Gio Alvarado and Shugo Fujii can contribute 100-120 IP of league average or slightly better ball, the dual benefit of giving the younger pitchers some breathing room and making the more competitive will be realized.

The Baystars seem destined for another last-place finish in the Central this year, but for the first time in quite a while it feels like there’s a little competitive light visible at the end of the tunnel.

Here’s one I didn’t see coming: according to the Jiji Press, Yokohama has agreed to post righthanded reliever Hiroki Sanada. This will be Yokohama’s first usage of the posting system, as previous BayStars alumni Kazuhiro Sasaki and Takashi Saito moved MLB via free agency.

I don’t expect Sanada will be a hot commodity on the posting market this offseason. He’s never been a strikeout machine, but he dipped to just 18 over 49 innings of work in 2011. That may be explained by a drop in velocity. But more importantly, I doubt he drew much scouting attention over the course of the season, as few would have anticipated him being posted. As such, he’s probably headed for a minimal posting fee and a minor league contract.

As a side rant, this is exactly the kind of player the posting system works against. If Sanada were a free agent, he could fly to Arizona and throw a few bullpen seasons for scouts and potentially find a fit for himself. Instead, he’ll have to hope that a team that has already seen him chooses to bid during the four days they are allowed to.

NPB Bullet Points returns with an all-photographic collection of non-sequiturs. Let’s begin.

In Japanese…

• Yokohama’s Seiichi Uchikawa can levitate, to the apparent dismay of the umpire.
• In other Yokohama news, Kimiyasu Kudoh, 46, become the oldest pitcher to win an NPB game.
• Rakuten manager Katsuya Nomura has a new watch. Where did he get such a lurid timepiece? You guessed it, from his goofy wife. For those of you that can read Japanese, I’ll include this link, where Nomura refers to his bullpen as not “stoppers” but “strippers”.
• Chunichi slugger Tony Blanco is big, but not as big as a sumo wrestler.
• Here’s a rare sighting: empty seats at Koshien. Hanshin drew fewer than 30,000 fans at Koshein for the first time in almost five years.

And In English…

• The incomparable Deanna snapped a shot of the Marines fans holding up signage indicating that 63,580 fans have signed a petition requesting the team to keep Bobby Valentine around beyond this season.
• My fellow Chicago ex-pat Matt of Yakyu All-Stars took a picture of Norichika Aoki’s WBC Gold Medal. I gotta say, that’s pretty underwhelming. Looks like it’s filled with chocolate.
• Simon has pics of Kazuhiro ‘Daimajin’ Sasaki throwing out the first pitch to Jose Canseco at a recent BayStars game. Fresh off his failure to knock out Danny Bonaduce, Canseco wanted to take Daimajin deep, but even though he got nine pitches he couldn’t do it.
• Marines lover Steve gives us a pic of a fairly typical Hanshin Tigers fan.