Reese Kaplan -- Players Exist All Over the World

 

While most of us are awash in Thanksgiving plans, perhaps thankful for survival during this pandemic, keeping a job when many others haven’t, and the great rush of positive emotions from the Steve Cohen acquisition, others of us are already thinking ahead to the things the Mets need to do to succeed.  Towards that end, it’s easy to look at the top free agents and trade targets, neither of which were in the Mets DNA under the Wilpons nor the one-hand-tied-behind-their-backs GMs who operated under them.  Now the Mets have decided that former GM Sandy Alderson will handle baseball operations but a new GM is on the way and it is regarded as a stepping stone position to take over from Alderson when he decides to retire. 

 

Another area where the Mets were consciously and conspicuously absent during the Wilpon era was seriously looking over the Pacific (and off the Florida coast) for players who were making impacts on the teams located there.  Each country has its own way of doing business with Major League Baseball, but with new ownership in town it’s probably time to review the basics.

 

For Japan, Nippon Professional Baseball (the MLB of that country) has changed the process a bit over the past few years.  If a player under contract to NPB is interested in emigrating to the USA to try his hand at MLB, he must start first by notifying his team and the league of his intention.  The team has the ultimate say in whether or not this move will take place.  To some ball clubs, it hurts a great deal to lose a major ballplayer, but others might welcome the departure because there is a fee to be paid by the acquiring team that is a percentage of the negotiated salary up to a cap of $20 million.  They refer to this transaction as a transfer fee for the right to obtain a top Japanese player to begin work in the USA.  For the players, it’s appealing because the baseball players in this country are paid far more than they are in Japan.  Once granted permission to negotiate, a player has 30 days to work with the MLB acquiring club to work on a contract.  If nothing is settled, the player returns to the NPB team. 

 

In South Korea, the process is a little different.  There a player must have put in seven years with his existing Korean Baseball Organization (KBO) team.  The ins and outs of this system more-or-less parallel the original NPB agreement and has not been updated like what’s being done today in Japan.  If MLB teams want a Korean players, they have a four-day period to submit sealed bids for what becomes the posting fee.  That amount is just like the transfer fee in Japan.  Then the team that wins has the right to negotiate a deal with the player.  This task is allocated 30 days after which the player accepts the deal or returns to his Korean ballclub.  The fee is waived if no contract with an MLB team is reached.  However, the KBO can simply reject the posting fee bids if they feel they are insufficient for the player in question to leave for the USA.  Three recent KBO imports include Jung-ho Kang (a separate article on player conduct for future reading perhaps at some other time), Byun-ho Park and Hyun-jin Ryu. 

 

Now the Cuban baseball emigration is less straightforward than what we have seen in the two Asian countries.  In 2018 there had been the fundamentals of a parallel system to what is working in Japan for Cuban ballplayers, but the current presidential administration blocked it.  The old method for Cuban players to reach the USA called for the to defect from Cuba when in another country, or taking a less-than-stellar boat off the island.  The logic behind the cessation of this projected draft plan was to keep the Cuban government from engaging in what amounted to human trafficking.  That is commendable, but of course, now it brings back the old methods, so no team owner in Cuba profits from defections or dangerous escapes.

 

There are some worthy players in Asia and Cuba worth researching and considering.  It would be nice to see the Mets open up their eyes to the entire world, not just the few Central and South American options they have used in the past.  More candidates means there will be greater opportunities to uncover a gem.  That’s one of the fundamental changes the new regime needs to make.