Arbitration in Japanese Baseball?

There is very little information available on arbitration. I had once read that only a couple of players had forced arbitration in the entire previous 70 years of professional baseball, but that the decision was heavilly weighted in favor of the team owners. I thought I had read that in one of "Jim Allen's Guide[s] to Japanese Baseball," but can't find it. Since I'm going by (possibly faulty) memory here, I wouldn't recommend using this as a primary source.

The only mention of arbitration in one of Jim's "Guides" was in his 1994 edition about the introduction of free agency to Japan. Allen-san has given me permission to reprint all of his "Guide" articles, so here is the relavant section:

Free Agency comes to Japan

In keeping with the authorized view of Japan as the land of consensus and compromise, rather than litigation and coercion, the system of salary arbitration and free agency developed out of negotiations between labor and management and were not imposed by the courts, as they were in the majors. The person who was perhaps most responsible for the sudden arrival of free agency may have been Akinobu Okada, the head of the player's negotiators. He refused to let the owners stall another year on the issue by promising to strike on opening day of 1994 if they didn't approve some system.

Well, the players got free agency, and just to show their compassion toward labor which Japanese management frequently boasts, the Tigers made sure that Okada would be the first player fired at the season's end. There's nothing wrong with dumping Okada, since he hasn't been any good for a couple of years. In fact, it was a smart move. To me that was the give away. I mean, if the Tigers make a smart move, they have to have some ulterior motive.

What's the difference between free agency here and in the States?

Structurally, the two systems aren't very similar. In the majors there is no limit on salaries to be offered to players changing teams, and compensation comes from draft choices. In Japan, compensation to teams losing free agents will be in terms of cash and perhaps a player who is not one of the forty players protected by the signing team. This means that if another team takes one of your free agents that you might pick up their forty-first best player. That's not much. It's not nearly as damaging as the loss of top draft choices in the majors.

Another BIG difference is that in the U.S., players have to have six years of service in order to file for free agency, but in Japan it's ten [1]. This guarantees that very few Japanese free agents will be in their prime. Of course, the players who do make it to free agency before the age of thirty will be those who were good enough to play in their teens. Position players in this category often develop far beyond other players who don't break in until their twenties. Except for these rare few, I don't think any free agents are going to have much of an impact.

A few of the better players, if they fill a complete gap on a contenting team, may influence a pennant race. I don't think any of the players available this year could turn either Daiei or Lotte into a contender [2]. This is not to say that there are no good players around. Matsunaga, Makihara, and Komada are all pretty good if they're healthy, but we can't expect them to retain their skill levels for much longer.

[1] This has been lowered to nine since this article was written.

[2] Daiei is now Softbank, and both Daiei and Lotte were perpetual cellar dwellers at the time the article was written.

Well, the above article, written before the 1994 season started, introduced what free agency was all about when it was finally made available in 1993.

Since the start of free agency, I don't recall any players filing for arbitration. There have been many demand to be posted, but none successfully. There is no doubt that the owners have full control over salary negotiations.

Dear Mr. Westbay,

Thank-you very much for your help. I understand that there is little information on this topic, but I have a few more quesitons and I appreciate any help you can give.

Is the arbitration system the same then as the "last best offer" system in America?

Also, does the nine-years of service mean that a player must be with one team, or is it nine-years of service in the league (NPB)? What does this mean then for players coming from the U.S. (like Mr. Baseball!), do they ever apply for arbitration? What about junior American players?

Also, I have been unable to find out if any Japanese players playing in the MLB have filed for arbitration. I have only found that a few are coming close to eligibility. Do you know of any that have filed?

Thank-you again for sharing your experience with me to help me on this subject. I know little about the Japanese baseball league, but I am enjoying learning as much as I can.

Sincerely,

Kristopher

P.S. I am trying to discover whether Japanese are actually less litigious than Americans or whether the country's systems play a role in this. Thus, I am trying to compare American players playing in Japan and Japanese players playing in the MLB and how they approach salary arbitration. (Maybe this is a better explination of my topic.)