Pacific League Agrees to 28 Protected Players

There's nothing like an outside person coming in to amend differences. With all the bickering going on about how to divide the players between the two merging teams, Live Door's entry into this has seen the Pacific League owners start to come together and get some things occomplished. It's like when I was a kid. My younger brother and sister would be arguing over something, then I'd come in and try to help resolve the arguement, just to have the two of them turn on me in a united front. It seems to me that the Pacific League owners, in their meeting yesterday (July 2) were better able to find some common ground than usual.

In the Pacific League meeting, progress was made in reguard to the division of player between the two merging teams. When the merger was originally announced, the first reaction by other teams was how they were going to divide up the Buffaloe carcus. Watanabe-owner said that the new team will be allowed to protect somewhere between 5 and 28 players, a wide range that still had the owners vieing for something on the lower end of that range out of the 125 players (foreign players excluded) between the two teams.

The agreement, which still must get Central League owners' approval, allows the new team to retain all 13 first year players between the two teams (because it would be sorry for the new players to be dropped after just one year) plus 15 players with two or more years experience. Assuming 17 players retiring or becoming free agents (the combined total last year), that leaves 80 players for the other 10 teams to choose from via a special four round draft.

The order in the first round goes from last place to first last year, alternating Central then Pacific League, so the order is: YBS, HNHF, HC, CLM, YS, SL, YG, FDH, CD, HT.

The second round goes the opposite direction.

For the third round, the new merged team is allowed to select 4-5 more players, then players are selected in the same order as the first round.

The fourth and final round will have the new team pick an additional 4-5 players again, followed by the other teams in the second round order.

Any players left over after the fourth round are free to make their own contracts with whomever they choose.

I could find no information on what the situation is for the foreign players of the two ball clubs.

Also, while technically the 125 players between the BlueWave and Buffaloes are all placed on wavers when the two clubs disove, nobody in Japan believes that anyone will take advantage of that technicality like Boston did when that Florida Marlin was placed on wavers to sign with Chunichi a year and a half ago. Such underhandedness just isn't even contemplated here.

There were still a number of voices wondering how the Pacific League will function with only five teams next year, but noone would bring up the Live Door buyout option. Miyauchi-owner (Orix), when asked about Live Door, would only comment, "That's a finished line of talk." It looks like the scheduling problem is one that the owners are not sure how to solve, but are willing to wait until September to deal with.

In related news, the Players' Union is meeting on Monday, July 5 and the stance they take on this issue will be discussed. While early reports said that a strike was out of the question, Matsuhara (not sure of his title with the Players' Union) stated that he'd gotten a number of requests from players in support of a strike to oppose the merger. If it's possible to sell the team rather than reduce the number of players by 70, then the owners should at least give a buy out a listen to - which they have not. A strike by the players in this case will have the full backing of Kintetsu and Orix fans at the least.

Next week's activities:

July 5: NPB and Players' Union Meeting
July 7: Owners' Meeting
July 9: Club Representatives and Players' Union Meeting

That will lead us into the All-Star break.