Teams Sign Foreign Players

Today is the first day that major league organizations can sign foreign players not subject to the amatuer draft.  Here’s a list from mlbtraderumors.com of some of the players that have signed for big bonuses so far.

What I thought was interesting is that the Pirates signed three Taiwanese high school players, who will be sent to a baseball academy in Australia to begin their professional careers.  What interests me is that the U.S. teams are beginning to jump with both feet into the market for Korean and Taiwanese high school players.

The U.S. and Japanese major leagues have a gentlemen’s agreement that the U.S. teams will not sign Japanese amatuer players and vice versa.  The only time this arrangement is breached is when a Japanese player makes clear that he wants to play in the U.S. exclusively, like Junichi Tazawa, the 22 year old amatuer recently signed by the Red Sox.

The Korean and Taiwanese leagues certainly won’t like this development, but I’m doubtful that the U.S. teams will give them the same deference they give the higher quality NPB.  Clearly, neither the Japanese teams, who heavily recruit players from Taiwan and Korea, nor the Korean or Taiwanese teams can compete with the MLB organizations.

The U.S. teams have far more money, especially when compared to the Korean or Taiwanese teams; and because the U.S. teams have much more developed minor league systems than the Japanese teams (they only have one minor league team each), the U.S. teams can sign high school age players, whereas the Japanese teams generally generally recruit from the older and more polished players playing in the KBO and the Taiwanese leagues, who need to be able to play at least the level of what would be considered the Japanese AA/AAA level.