With the World Series coming to an end, baseball's next biggest story will involve Japanese phenom Shohei Otani, who has long been anticipated to make the leap this winter. (Otani is, of course, the pitcher-slash-hitter whose uniqueness we covered earlier in the month in a piece about fantasy and video games.)
There's just one catch -- a negotiations snafu is currently threatening the whole thing. Here's what Joel Sherman of the New York Post reported on Wednesday:
The MLB-NPB posting agreement expired Tuesday. The sides, though, were close to an agreement to move to a system whereby the Japanese team losing a player to MLB would receive a percentage of the deal the player signed with a MLB club — believed to be between 15-20 percent.
However, Otani's team, the Nippon Ham Fighters, refused to give its needed vote to the deal unless the righty pitcher was grandfathered into the old deal, whereby the Fighters would receive the maximum $20 million in exchange for posting him prior to his Japanese free agency.
Sherman notes that MLB is willing to let Otani come over under the old arrangement. The holdup, though, is with the MLBPA. The union is concerned about Otani receiving so little and his old team receiving so much, and wants him to hire a certified agent -- Scott Boras being among the candidates.
The union and Otani have yet to reach an agreement. And if they don't, then he won't be coming over this winter. That would be a loss for both MLB and its fans. We'll just have to wait and see if a resolution gets worked out.
