Jim Allen of the Daily Yomiuri Online has an interesting series of articles on Japanese baseball that are definitely worth the read. Japanese baseball is beginning to face issues from the influx of top tier Japanese ballplayers into MLB.
In the first installment of his Special Report, former MLB manager and current Chiba Lotte Marines manager Bobby Valentine comments on an eerie similarity
I think the real danger now is that Japan is closer to becoming the second coming of the Negro leagues
Valentine’s point is MLB is acquiring more and more Japanese baseball players, therbey reducing the starpower and potentially the viability of maintaining a high talent league. With Japanese teams posting more of their top talent for MLB, the league is finding that not only are they losing players to the US (and Toronto), but they are also discovering an even more challenging reality. An unintended consequence is that MLB is now looking beyond simply bringing Japanese players to MLB, they are now looking to establish a presence into Asia with teams in China, Taiwan, and South Korea.
In his his next installment, Allen discusses the shrinking talent pool in Japan. Allen offers a couple of suggestions including expanding the acquisition of foreign players in Japan (currently limited to 4 out of their 25-man rosters) as well as a “new [developmental] league with hundreds of extra games.” This on the surface seems counterintuitive given the reduction of major league ready players, but Allen (and Valentine) do a good job of explaining it in detail.
Allen intends to continue his report tomorrow with an explanation of how to “Build Japan as a World Brand.”
UPDATE: Just as I post this, I notice this story from Buster Olney at ESPN.
A contingent of executives from the New York Yankees will fly to China next week with the hope of concluding ongoing negotiations on a working agreement with the China Baseball Association. This could lead to the Yankees dispatching coaches and trainers to work with players in China, and perhaps, in years to come, beginning a baseball academy.
This is precisely the type of move I would hope the Nationals would make. Ideally, Nationals scout Bill Singer, who has been assigned to the Asian region, can work to get the Nationals “boots on the ground” (to borrow a phrase from Dana Brown).
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