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According to Evan Drellich at The Athletic, Nippon Professional Baseball players are preparing to fight for a major overhaul of the system used to keep them in place, and in Japan, for as long as it does. They plan to combat the reserve system “on antitrust grounds,” per Drellich, which would mean significant changes to not just movement within the NPB, but for leaving Japan for a league such as Major League Baseball, as well.
Players in Japan have two forms of free agency: domestic and international. Domestic free agency, the freedom to switch to another NPB team, is achieved after seven or eight years in the league, depending on whether the player was drafted out of college or high school.
But to leave as a free agent for a foreign league like MLB, the wait is nine years. Players can depart sooner, but only if their team posts them for bidding. Instead, NPB players want what’s in place in MLB: free agency after a blanket six years, regardless of entry or destination.
As Drellich points out, the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association is not quite as aggressive or as powerful as their MLBPA cousins, but they believe they’ve found a legal entity in that will support their cause here, in the form of Japan’s Fair Trade Commission. It’s worth reading the whole thing to see the situation and what the players hope to change; there are more important things to consider than, “Oh, I’d get to see more great Japanese players in MLB sooner if they want to be there,” because we are primarily talking about the overhaul of a system in need of it, like MLB has been in need of its own over the years.
The National Women’s Soccer League Players Association announced on Wednesday morning that they’ve agreed to a new collective bargaining agreement with the NWSL, and while I have to look deeper into the whole thing, first impressions are killer:
Today, the NWSLPA announces that Players have secured freedom over their careers in a groundbreaking new CBA that eliminates the draft, secures free agency for all, ends trades without Player consent, establishes guaranteed contracts for all, safeguards Player health through workload management, and institutes revenue sharing. Notably, the terms negotiated by the NWSLPA will establish the NWSL as the first American major pro sports league to abolish the draft.
Since last September, the Players Association has been in confidential negotiations with NWSL to negotiate an extension of the current CBA under new terms. The NWSL invited the NWSLPA to engage in midterm, voluntary negotiations, an opportunity the Players seized upon to fight for rights that the NWSLPA laid the foundation for in the CBA ratified in 2022.
This is all excellent, but one thing really stands out to me above the rest. If you’ve been reading me for a while, you know how anti-draft I am. This is from all the way back in 2019, with regard to the NBA’s, but it can be applied to other leagues, too:
Drafts, like pretty much every other policy put forward by owners in sports leagues, exist in order to control labor and limit their earnings. In a league with a salary cap like the NBA, this becomes even more obvious: 29 of the NBA’s 30 teams spent the 2018-2019 season right below or right over the $109 million salary cap (the latter allowed by a series of complicated exemptions for additional spending). No one in the NBA can hoard talent in the absence of a draft, as roster limitations, the salary cap, and the lack of an organized minor league that’s comparable to what Major League Baseball has in play make that impossible.
In short, no one is really outspending anyone else, and the players would go where they want within this system assuming interest is mutual and there is roster space to make it happen. What purpose does the NBA Draft serve, then, that couldn’t be served instead by amateurs transitioning into the league through free agency? Hell, removing the draft would also inhibit tanking, since teams would have to try in order to entice the best available talents.
Teams don’t want players to have choice, though. They don’t want them to have any kind of leverage, or bargaining power, or anything that will allow them to ask for what they’re worth. They want to control these players for as little as possible for as long as possible, and that’s where the draft comes in. That the NWSL has agreed to be rid of the draft is astounding, but it also shows that it can be done. Other leagues could follow suit. Will they? That’s an entirely different question, and I imagine it is much more likely in a smaller league like this than in a juggernaut like MLB. However, every league that does end up going this route at some point, no matter how small, is just further proof of how the draft is unnecessary, and a choice. One we don’t need to be fine with just because we’re used to it.
My former coworker and fellow SB Nation newsletter writer Tom Ziller wrote about the hardening of the NBA salary cap via the second apron, and how it’s all anti-labor even if the money going to the players, in aggregate, hasn’t changed much. By restricting movement, limiting chances for pay days non-stars, essentially dropping the existence of the no-trade clause, and more, the NBA has gotten a bit top heavy, and put the league very much back in control of everything, removing power from the players’ hands.
I published my own concerns about the second apron in this space in early July, when free agency was first getting going, but seeing Ziller — who knows this whole beat much better than I do, despite my interest in the NBA and sports labor — makes me feel a lot better about feeling bad about this change.
There’s a lot to dig into there, but it’s worth the digging, and it’s a free Ziller piece, as well, which isn’t always the way for his paid newsletter. So check it, and Ziller, out while you can.
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