International Pastime: Will Junichi Tazawa Change Japanese Baseball Forever?

International Pastime looks at baseball's influence outside the U.S.

For years major league teams have honored a handshake agreement with Japan's Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) not to sign Japanese amateur prospects. Once a player signs in Japan, he's not eligible to test free agency for nine years, meaning any player who hopes to jump across the Pacific to play in the majors before then must go through an expensive posting process which compensates his Japanese team.

It's a system that has allowed Japanese baseball to flourish, but from a player's perspective, it's obviously quite limiting. As Peter Abraham of the Journal News describes, Junichi Tazawa, a 22-year-old right-handed pitcher, hopes to buck the system by skipping the NPB and signing with a U.S. team.

Tazawa has been heavily scouted by several MLB teams (Abraham mentions the Red Sox, Braves, Mets and Dodgers, and another report puts the Tigers in the mix, as well) and last week asked the 12 teams in the NPB not to draft him so that he'd be free to sign a major league contract. Not surprisingly, NPB quickly went into freak-out mode, issuing the following press release last week:

"The initial rules for amateur player acquisition was created back in 1962 by the Commissioners from the Majors and the NPB," the release said. "Since then, no amateur players have signed with MLB teams and it is this fact that indicates that this was more than just a gentleman's agreement, but rather an implicit understanding that the Majors would do no such thing," it said. "That a handful of clubs from the Majors is trying to break this gentlemen's agreement is truly regrettable."

The NPL has appealed to commissioner Bud Selig and is sending a delegation to meet with MLB officials this week.

In other words, Japan won't let Tazawa go without a fight. If Selig gives the go-ahead for an MLB team to sign Tazawa after he's been drafted by an NBP team, he'd be setting a new precedent that'd turn the current system on it's head.

More Japanese prospects would inevitably follow suit, and NBP teams would just as likely attempt to throw dollars at American amateurs. In the long-run, MLB teams with their deeper pockets would likely win out, though considering the end result would be higher salaries, I can imagine Selig is not eager to go down that road.

In any case, stay tuned, because this should be interesting.