Former Chunichi Dragons manager Masayuki Ochiai and former DeNA BayStars manager Kiyoshi Nakahata appeared on TBS’s “Sunday Morning” to discuss high schoolers who sign minor-league contracts directly with MLB teams, bypassing Japan’s NPB draft entirely. Ochiai took the position that the choice belongs to the player, saying “whether to go or not is his own decision to make,” while Nakahata countered that players “should repay Japanese baseball” first — putting the two at odds. On 5ch, opinions split across a wide range of angles: whether “repayment” is even the right framing, the harsh realities of pay and conditions in the minor leagues, how past direct-to-MLB players like Junichi Tazawa turned out, and how the situation compares to transfer norms in soccer and basketball.
Masayuki Ochiai on players heading straight from high school to the U.S. without going through the NPB draft: “Whether to go or not is a choice that belongs to the player”
Former Chunichi Dragons manager Masayuki Ochiai (72) and former DeNA BayStars manager Kiyoshi Nakahata (72) appeared on TBS’s “Sunday Morning” (Sundays, 8:00 a.m.) on the 30th.
They discussed cases of high schoolers signing minor-league contracts with MLB teams without going through the NPB draft.
Source: news.yahoo.co.jp / Original article here
Isn't Tazawa a success story?
Well, South Korea has Park Chan-ho, and Taiwan has Wang Chien-ming.
The future trend will be decided by whether players who went straight to the majors, like Rintaro or Morii, end up more successful than their peers who stick to the traditional NPB-to-majors route.
If a player who joins NPB this year lands a big posting-system contract worth a fortune a few years from now while Rintaro's still grinding away in the minors, people will conclude the NPB route was the better path after all.
If he'd said something like "building a track record in Japan first is better for your contract terms," fine, but…
It's really about how he phrased it.
Nakahata's the harmony type.
He knows full well Ochiai never budges on his views, and that there'd be no point in him just agreeing with Ochiai anyway — this is a calculated move on his part.
This is just what happens when a lone-wolf type and a Mr. Sociable go head to head.
What exactly has Japanese baseball done for them?
Are you serious right now
Baseball's stayed Japan's number one sport precisely because the generations before them built it up.
For a guy heading overseas early, whether baseball stays popular in Japan is exactly the kind of thing he couldn't care less about.
NPB invests in these guys, raises them with painstaking care, and then the moment they're polished, the U.S. just takes them?
Just thinking about it is infuriating.
— NPB never even enters the picture.
That was just Yomiuri monopolizing Giants broadcasts.
These days you can watch MLB games on TV too.
Japanese pro baseball treats you far better.
Surely nobody actually thinks you go to America and just start playing in MLB right away?
The minors are hell.
The long wait for free agency is the real drawback.
Best case is something like Ohtani — a side agreement that gets you posted early.
What has NPB actually done for kids who haven't even made it past high school ball?
They get to use Koshien Stadium every spring and summer, don't they?
They're raised on taxpayer money, though? It'd be fine if they paid Japanese tax on their U.S. earnings.
Baseball's popularity is growing worldwide, so that's not really an issue.
Even though the number of countries entering the WBC is shrinking?
It's overwhelmingly popular in Japan, so who cares about the rest of the world.
Well, there is a logic where standing on a bigger, more-watched stage counts as repaying baseball itself lol
That's not repayment of anything.
Though honestly, nobody needs "repayment" anyway.
Even if a player goes to the majors, the money Japanese sponsors send out the door outweighs what comes in from America — so it's just a net outflow of cash for Japanese baseball.
Unless Japanese companies stop pouring money into MLB, that is.
The minors are seriously such a rough environment.
That's basically saying NPB is MLB's farm system in all but name.
That's just how it actually is, so it can't be helped.
There's no flipping that — not genetically, not population-wise, not economically.
Still, it's the world's number two league, and you can still become a multimillionaire off NPB alone as things stand, so it's not bad.
The minors were never a development program to begin with —
they're a place to fish raw talent out of a huge pile of nobodies.
A young NPB player makes around 20 million yen (~$135,000).
The minors really are hell.
Seems like a lot of people mistakenly think you get instant big money by going to America.
The conditions are clearly better in Japan.
That's also a misconception, honestly.
It's causing a bit of a stir just because a few guys who did land instant big money right after moving to the U.S. have shown up.
But I'd guess Oda could pull in something like a 500-million-yen (~$3.4 million) signing bonus.
Honestly I didn't know so I looked it up — the $1.5 million signing bonus is the only big number; the salary itself isn't disclosed, and estimates make it look pretty modest. Factor in cost of living and the signing bonus is probably about on par with Japan anyway.
Those sports let players go overseas right away, so of course people are going to ask, "what's the deal with baseball, then?"
Basketball still has a small sample size of players going abroad, so it doesn't really have that "lets players leave freely right away" image.
Soccer's just absurd — it's less that clubs are being played by the players and more that the clubs themselves seem infected with this "overseas! Europe!" mindset, secretly grinning as they wave players off…
Soccer really is out of its mind on this.
Sumo's the opposite extreme.
Baseball's current standard is that only the genuinely talented ones go — sure, some half-baked ones go too, but they're rare.
In soccer, a cut of the transfer fee gets distributed — I think even the elementary school team a player once belonged to gets something like 0.5%.
The club that receives the transfer fee is required to share it.
Background and key points of this debate
The path of high schoolers signing minor-league contracts directly with MLB teams, bypassing Japan’s domestic draft, drew major attention in 2008 when pitcher Junichi Tazawa signed with the Boston Red Sox. At the time, NPB, citing an agreement related to the rookie draft, refused to let Tazawa return to a Japanese team — a stance that caused friction until it was later corrected. Minor-league contracts often pay less than what young NPB players earn in salary, and the harshness of the conditions is frequently pointed out, though looking at signing bonuses alone, some cases exceed a rookie NPB salary. Opinion on the thread split mainly over whether “repayment” is even the right framing — one side wanted consideration shown toward NPB for providing amateur-era infrastructure like Koshien Stadium, while the other argued individual career choices shouldn’t be burdened with a sense of debt to the sport. The discussion’s spread into comparisons with transfer systems in soccer and basketball is also worth noting as a wrinkle specific to baseball.
*This article is compiled as an excerpt/summary of the 5ch (Geinou/Sports News+) thread “[Baseball] Masayuki Ochiai: on players heading to the U.S. without going through the NPB draft, “the choice is his own” — Kiyoshi Nakahata dissents: “I want them to repay Japanese baseball”.”
