Fretting over irregular contacts with overseas players, Major League Baseball has ordered its teams to suspend working agreements with Nippon Professional Baseball clubs, multiple MLB and NPB sources with knowledge of the matter said Tuesday.
The order has also forced MLB clubs to sever ties with pro teams from Mexico, Taiwan and South Korea. For NPB, such agreements have been a huge help to its teams for decades, allowing players and coaches to learn from MLB teams and gain experience they couldn't get in Japan.
"Going forward, entering into new working agreements or complying with any active working agreements...constitutes a violation of MLB rules and policies and may subject clubs to discipline. As such, any active working agreement should be promptly dissolved," the March 4 memo seen by Kyodo News said.
The new rule will prevent former Japanese players working as advisors for MLB teams, such as the New York Yankees' Hideki Matsui and the San Diego Padres' Hideo Nomo from serving as spring training instructors in Japan.
It would also prevent employees of Japanese teams from broadening their horizons with MLB teams, as three-time Pacific League champion Orix Buffaloes manager Satoshi Nakajima and Chunichi Dragons pitching coach Akinori Otsuka did in the minor leagues with the San Diego Padres.
The stated purpose of the order is to eliminate contact between MLB teams and players under contract with or reserved by teams from the four foreign leagues with which MLB has protocol agreements.
A famous example of such behavior came when the Los Angeles Dodgers were fined for breaking MLB's agreement by giving two-way star Shohei Ohtani a bag full of gifts in 2016.
Dodger infielder Adrian Gonzalez, who presented the gifts at Tokyo Dome, recalled in January to website Dodger Blue how the Dodgers' president of baseball operations, Andrew Friedman among others asked him to give the gift bag to the Japanese star.
"Andrew and company said, 'Hey, if we give you a care package for him, will you present it to him? Because we cannot pursue him, it's against the rules, but you as a person can obviously take whatever you want to any player,'" Gonzalez said.
"Of course, the Dodgers got fined and in trouble for that. But they paid their fines. They knew there was a possibility and the team paid their fines."
MLB's "solution" to this kind of contact is to take away from teams that have played by the rules and benefitted from the exchanges, rather than doing anything concrete about a practice that is already against the rules.
"MLB is always as vague as they can be," one MLB scout said. "They always get caught off-guard by something, and then they overreact and put a Band-Aid on it."
Nippon Ham Fighters International Director Kenichi Iwamoto, who said his team was forced to terminate its arrangement with the Texas Rangers, said there was little his team could do about MLB rules.
"We have been having coaching exchanges that have been very productive for us, and for the MLB teams, too. But I have to respect MLB's decision," he told Kyodo News in English.
Otsuka also expressed disappointment.
"As a player (in MLB) I recognized that the way they coached was different," Otsuka said. "I learned so much working as a Triple-A coach, and attending major league meetings."
"You look at what Nakajima-san has done, and it wasn't all due to his overseas experience, but it contributed to the breadth of his knowledge. This is extremely regrettable."
