By ALAN SCHWARZ and BRAD LEFTON
Published: November 19, 2008
As far as Junichi Tazawa is concerned, the most rebellious acts in his 22 years have been ignoring his homework and sneaking home after sunrise. But as the first high-profile Japanese baseball prospect to turn down his nation’s leagues to entertain offers from Major League Baseball teams, he has found himself straining relations between baseball entities on two continents, with accusations of talent raiding and defiance of decades-long understandings.
Many Japanese baseball officials are outraged that U.S. teams are courting Junichi Tazawa, a hard-throwing right-handed pitcher.
Many Japanese baseball officials are outraged that United States teams are courting Tazawa, a hard-throwing right-handed pitcher, because they insist it is long-established practice for amateurs like him to be strictly off limits to major league clubs. Even some American general managers, including the Yankees’ Brian Cashman, agree.
Major League Baseball officials maintain that the letter of their protocol agreement with their Japanese counterparts, Nippon Professional Baseball, does not forbid either league from courting amateur talent from the other’s nation. When one Japanese representative characterized the rule as a gentlemen’s agreement during a meeting in New York, he was angrily rebutted by a Major League Baseball official, according to two attendees.
The Tazawa dispute extends beyond one pitching phenom and an interpretation of honor. The Japanese major leagues have already seen established stars leave for American clubs, and amateurs following Tazawa’s path away from those leagues could further hurt the leagues’ long-term viability.
But sports talent is an increasingly free-flowing market — notably demonstrated this summer when Brandon Jennings, one of the United States’ top high school basketball players, signed to play professionally in Italy for $1.2 million rather than play at a college in the United States.
“This was more than just a gentlemen’s agreement, but rather an implicit understanding that the major leagues would do no such thing,” Nippon Professional Baseball said in a news release on signing Japanese baseball amateurs. “That a handful of clubs from the majors is trying to break this gentlemen’s agreement is truly regrettable.”
Rob Manfred, Major League Baseball’s executive vice president for labor relations, responded in a recent interview, “I’m sure we will have ongoing conversation with them about how we might — might — be able to address their concerns.”
Regarding how some major league teams still believe that Tazawa should not be signed, Manfred added, “It’s not due to any lack of clarity — it’s just due to the fact that clubs have different views of the world.”
Tazawa’s talent snuck up on him as much as this controversy. After pitching for his high school team in the port city of Yokohama, he was not drafted by the 12 Japanese major league organizations. His only offer was to pitch for Japan Oil in the industrial league, a workers’ minor league unaffiliated with the Japanese majors. He has been there ever since.
In an interview this month in a cramped meeting room at the company dorm in Kawasaki, Tazawa said he casually watched Major League Baseball on television while growing up and admired trailblazers like the recently retired Hideo Nomo, who became a sensation pitching for the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995. But Tazawa said he never fantasized a similar career for himself.
“I never had an interest in the game over there,” Tazawa said in Japanese. “I guess that’s mostly because I never imagined I had the talent to consider such a thing.”
Tazawa improved in the industrial leagues and, at an amateur tournament in Taiwan last November, had his fastball clocked on the scoreboard as high as 97 miles an hour. “I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I thought the speed gun must be broken or something.”
Astonishment extended to the scouts in the stands, some of whom were from the United States. They expressed interest in Tazawa to Japan Oil’s manager, Hideaki Okubo, a 39-year-old recently retired professional who had watched many peers move midcareer to American baseball. Okubo encouraged Tazawa to consider the rare opportunity of signing directly with a Major League Baseball team, and later said in Japanese during an interview that Tazawa would be best served by “the toughness of an unfamiliar environment where his need for survival would be challenged more.”
Tazawa thrived this summer, posting a 10-1 record and a 1.02 earned run average for Japan Oil and striking out 95 batters in 88 1/3 innings. As interest from scouts affiliated with Major League Baseball escalated and Japan’s Oct. 30 draft of amateur players approached, Tazawa requested that all Japanese teams not select him. They acquiesced, smoothing his path to the United States’ free market.
Except the market is not entirely free. Officials of major league teams have a wide spectrum of views as to whether Tazawa should be signed.
Mets General Manager Omar Minaya said he considered Tazawa available but continued: “It’s a sensitive area. It’s fair to say that if we were to go out and get their college players, what would prevent them from coming after our college players?”
“I’m old school — there has been an understanding,” said Cashman, whose team has a formal cooperative relationship with the Yomiuri Giants, a team particularly upset with the Tazawa affair. “There’s been a reason that Japanese amateurs haven’t been signed in the past, so we consider him hands off.”
The protocol agreement between Major League Baseball and Nippon Professional Baseball does not address the signing of either nation’s amateur players. It does formalize how Japanese veterans may switch continents: on the open market after nine seasons in the Japan major leagues, or earlier if a player’s club chooses to auction off his rights through a procedure commonly known as posting.
Posting was established in 1998, and established stars like Daisuke Matsuzaka have generated as much as $51 million for their Japanese clubs. Losing top amateurs could hurt that pipeline.
The Yomiuri official Hidetoshi Kiyotake has said he fears for the viability of the Japanese majors should the major leagues descend on his nation’s amateur talent. In a recent issue of the Japanese magazine Weekly Baseball, he wrote that South Korea’s major league had been seriously harmed by 38 amateur players signing directly with major league clubs since 1994.
“Unless fans here stand up and proclaim, ‘protect Japanese baseball,’ we’re liable to fall into the same trap as South Korean baseball,” Kiyotake wrote.
Tazawa would not be the first modern Japanese amateur to sign with a United States club, but the first to do so against Nippon Professional Baseball’s wishes. Other players, like the current Atlanta Braves minor leaguer Ryohei Shimabukuro, signed after dropping out of high school but were not considered a top prospect by Japanese clubs. In 2003, pitcher Kaz Tadano was shunned by Japanese teams after he appeared in a pornographic film, and he signed with the Cleveland Indians.
Japanese teams have also approached American amateurs. In 2002, the Orix Blue Wave tried to sign the Cincinnati Reds’ first-round draft pick, third baseman Mark Schramek, while he was in a contract stalemate with Cincinnati.
As for formalizing any rule barring the signing of amateurs outright, some major league team officials think that could violate American antitrust or anti-discrimination laws. And if one team pursues a top player, others will surely follow.
“There’s a fine line between falling behind the competition because you’re quote being respectful, and competing like others will compete,” said Ned Colletti, general manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers. “We have to be wise in our decision-making at the moment of truth.”
Tazawa whetted scouts’ appetites again Monday, when he threw a five-hit shutout for Japan Oil in the national amateur tournament. It is believed that at least a half-dozen teams will actively pursue him, including the Boston Red Sox, the Braves and the Seattle Mariners, with offers that could reach $2 million to $5 million.
Fearful that Tazawa’s signing would encourage more Japanese amateurs to follow him, Nippon Professional Baseball recently passed a rule that requires any amateur who jumps to a major league team to sit out two or three years before being able to return to play in Japan.
“For them to go out and change the rules like that just blows me away,” Tazawa said. “I never imagined the response would be like this.”
Yet Tazawa has no intention of reconsidering his decision. Whether he blazes any trail for others, or if future rules are adapted for the changing global marketplace, he will find out with everyone else.
“I’m looking forward to signing with an American team and seeing what I can do,” he said. “The appeal of matching power against power is too great for me to pass up.”
