What is Wrong with Ibata?

Contract negotiations are far and away my least favorate part of baseball. Both sides, front offices and players, go at each other like rival siblings. I compare them to siblings because many of the arguements seem very child-like - with each side having its own sense of "fairness," while unable to express it properly to the other side.

The Giants had put a system together that mapped monetary values to performance down to 1-man yen units. While not everyone agreed with the assigned values, especially for minor roles, it did keep the quibbling down to a minimum. The main problem with systems like this is that people start working toward performing to the system instead of fulfilling their proper roles on the field.

As for Ibata and other players who make over 1-oku yen, everything becomes relative. Ibata got a 33% raise after the championship 2004 season. Now he's upset that he's only getting a 30% raise after Chunichi failed to win the pennant. The way many players see it, if they continued to do as well as the previous year, then they deserve the same raise. If you say that this is completely out of touch with reality, then you'd be correct. And it's not just Ibata.

There has got to be a better way of determining salary, but I don't know what it is. I know that there are more variables than just a player's and team's performance for a given year. Incentive bonuses make the most sense. But they need to be flexible should a player change roles between contract time and the start of the season, mid-season even.

- There has got to be a better way of determining salary, but I don't know what it is.

I think that free agency is the proper way of determining salary. Get rid of this 9 year choke-hold the teams have on players, and you will see players being paid fair market value. Basic supply and demand economics would reveal the true value of a player. Just my opinion.

He probably does over-rate himself a bit, but his attitude is not out of place for the Dragons. A lot of their top players (including Kawakami and Fukudome) are not happy with what they are being offered and have not yet signed. It looks more indicative of a general malaise than particular private problem.

Salaries in NPB make no sense because the ball clubs are not independent financial entities (not that all MLB clubs are either).