NPB Players Pushing For Earlier Free Agency
Posted: Fri Aug 23, 2024 12:17 pm
Players in Japan\'s Nippon Professional Baseball are fighting for earlier free agency, which could allow some of them to make the move to Major League Baseball sooner.
NPB players have two forms of free agency.
A player can achieve domestic free agency after seven or eight years in the league, depending on whether the player was drafted out of high school or college.
Getting full international free agency, allowing a player to sign with an MLB club, takes nine years.
The Japan Professional Baseball Players Association is trying to lower both of those numbers to six years, the same amount of service time that MLB players need for free agency.