The Posting System for Japanese Players

By 4Baseball Staff · November 5, 2026 · 9 min read

How the posting system lets Japanese stars move from Nippon Professional Baseball to the majors: why it exists, how blind bids became a fee formula, the players it brought over and where its limits lie.

A star in Japan's top professional league cannot simply sign with a major league club whenever he likes. His contract belongs to his Japanese team, and for most of a career he cannot leave unless that team agrees. The posting system is the agreement between Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) and Major League Baseball that lets a Japanese club offer a player to major league teams in return for a payment. It has brought over Ichiro Suzuki, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Yu Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka, Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, among others.

The system has been rewritten more than once, and the changes tell a story about money, leverage and fairness. This article explains why a posting system exists at all, how the mechanics worked in the first version and how they work in the current one, what the fee formula means in dollars, and what the system can and cannot do. Fees and contract sizes below come from widely published reports, not from the historical record, which carries only major league results; check MLB's and NPB's own announcements for the current agreement.

Why a Japanese player needs to be posted

NPB has 12 clubs in two leagues. Like most professional leagues, it ties a player to his club for a long stretch of his career. A player earns the right to free agency only after many seasons of first-team service, roughly nine years to be free to sign abroad. A star who is good at 21 and wants to test himself against major league hitters at 24 does not have that right. If his club refuses to release him, he waits.

From the Japanese club's side, losing its best player for nothing is a large cost. If the player could simply leave, the club would have no way to be paid for the years it spent signing and developing him. The posting system exists to solve both problems at once: it gives the player a path to the majors before he reaches free agency, and it gives the club a payment for letting him go. It also gives MLB teams a structured way to bid for players whose rights they cannot otherwise negotiate for.

Two other routes exist. A player who reaches free agency after the required years of service can sign with an MLB club without posting, and no fee is paid; Kodai Senga's move to the Mets (he debuted in 2023) is an example. And before 1998 there was no formal system at all, only individual arrangements and disputes.

Before the system: Murakami, Nomo and Irabu

The first Japanese player in the majors was Masanori Murakami, a left-handed pitcher who reached the San Francisco Giants in 1964 through an arrangement between the Giants and his Japanese club. He pitched in 9 games in 1964 and 45 in 1965, going 5-1 with 9 saves and a 3.43 earned run average over the two seasons, according to the historical record. A dispute over who held his rights followed, and he did not return to the majors.

The next wave began in 1995, when pitcher Hideo Nomo found a loophole. By retiring from his Japanese club he ended his contract, which let him sign with the Los Angeles Dodgers as a free agent. He won the National League Rookie of the Year Award that year, going 13-6 with a 2.54 ERA and 236 strikeouts. The Japanese league was unhappy that a star had left without compensation, and the episode helped push the two leagues toward an agreement.

In 1997, another pitcher, Hideki Irabu, made clear he wanted to play for one major league club, the Yankees, while his Japanese team had arranged to give his rights to another, the Padres. That dispute was one more argument for a formal process. The agreement that followed, in 1998, created posting.

The first version: blind bids

Under the 1998 agreement a Japanese club that wished to let a player go would "post" him. Major league clubs then submitted sealed bids for the right to negotiate, and the amount bid was a release fee that would be paid to the Japanese club. The club could accept or reject the highest bid. If it accepted, the winning major league club received an exclusive window of 30 days to sign the player. If the two sides failed to agree on a contract, the player returned to Japan and the fee was not paid.

The system produced large numbers. In the winter of 2000, the Seattle Mariners won the rights to Ichiro Suzuki with a bid of about $13.1 million paid to his club, Orix. In 2006 the Boston Red Sox bid about $51.1 million for Daisuke Matsuzaka's rights, and the Texas Rangers bid about $51.7 million for Yu Darvish in 2011. Those bids were on top of the player's own contract: with Matsuzaka, the fee and the salary together were more than $100 million.

The results on the field were mixed, which is the other lesson of the system. Ichiro hit .350 with 242 hits in his first season in 2001 and 262 hits in 2004; his career total in the majors was 3,089 hits. Matsuzaka went 15-12 in 2007, helped Boston win the World Series that year, and went 18-3 with a 2.90 ERA in 2008, but he never repeated those years: his career line in the majors was 56-43 with a 4.45 ERA. Darvish went 16-9 with 221 strikeouts as a rookie in 2012 and built a long career, winning 115 games through 2025. A fee of $50 million guaranteed nothing but the right to talk.

Why the first version was criticized

The blind-bid auction drew three complaints.

1. The money went to the club, not the player. The release fee was paid to the Japanese team. The player had no share, and a large fee could arguably leave a club with less to offer him in salary.
2. It favored rich clubs. A sealed bid is won by whoever is willing to pay the most, so small-market clubs tended to be shut out of the market for the best players.
3. Teams could be left empty-handed. A club that won a bid and then failed to sign the player got its money back, but it had lost the winter's planning time, and the player could return to Japan and try again.

In 2013 the two sides agreed to a revised system. The release fee was capped at $20 million, and instead of one winning bidder, any club willing to pay the fee could negotiate with the player. Masahiro Tanaka was the first star posted under the new rules, in the winter of 2013-14. The Yankees signed him to a seven-year contract reported at $155 million, and the Rakuten Golden Eagles received the capped $20 million fee. In his first season in the majors Tanaka went 13-5 with a 2.77 ERA.

The current formula

A newer agreement took effect in late 2018. It replaced the flat cap with a sliding scale tied to the size of the contract the player signs. As widely reported, the release fee is 20 percent of the first $25 million of the guaranteed contract, 17.5 percent of the next $25 million, and 15 percent of anything above $50 million. The Japanese club therefore gets more for a bigger deal, and the fee moves with the market instead of staying at a fixed number.

The last row is the 12-year, $325 million contract that Yoshinobu Yamamoto signed with the Dodgers in the winter of 2023, as reported. By the formula, his former club, Orix, would receive about $50.6 million. The arithmetic is the sum of three pieces: 20 percent of $25 million is $5 million, 17.5 percent of the next $25 million is $4.375 million, and 15 percent of the remaining $275 million is $41.25 million. In the majors Yamamoto went 7-2 with a 3.00 ERA in 2024 and 12-8 with a 2.49 ERA and 201 strikeouts in 2025, and he was the World Series MVP that fall, per the historical record.

Players under 25: the amateur rule

One more rule shapes how young stars arrive. Under the agreements between MLB and its players, a foreign player who is under 25 and has fewer than about six years of professional experience is treated as an international amateur. His signing bonus is then limited by his club's international bonus pool, which is a small fixed amount, and he can sign only a minor league contract.

Shohei Ohtani is the best-known case. He was posted by the Nippon-Ham Fighters in 2017, when the fee was still capped at $20 million, and signed with the Angels for a small bonus because of the pool limit, though he had been among the best players in Japan. His early statistics show what the cap hid: in 2018 he hit 22 home runs and batted .285 and went 4-2 as a pitcher with a 3.31 ERA. In 2021 he hit 46 home runs with 100 RBI and won the first of four Most Valuable Player awards (2021, 2023, 2024 and 2025). In his early years the rules held his pay well below what his production would suggest on an open market.

The restriction raises a question that goes beyond Japan. If a rule limits what young international players may earn, who benefits? Supporters say it protects the draft-like structure for amateur talent and keeps costs down; critics say it makes the player the loser. The related debate over an international draft is covered in the international draft debate.

Players who came over

The table lists several Japanese players of the post-1964 era with their first major-league season, from the historical record.

Two things stand out. Most first seasons were solid or better, which says something about the quality of NPB and about how selectively clubs choose whom to post. The careers diverge afterward, which is the real lesson for a team buying one: Matsuzaka's first two seasons were his best, while Darvish and Ohtani built long careers. Also, most of the highest-profile postings in the table are pitchers.

What the system does well and where it fails

The posting system does three things. It lets a Japanese star move before free agency, it pays the club that developed him, and it gives major league teams a defined, public process. Those are real benefits, and the 2018 formula is more flexible than the sealed bids of 1998.

It also has limits. A Japanese club decides whether to post a player at all, so a player who wants to go may be refused. The player has no say in the fee. The negotiating window is limited, so the timing of an injury or a poor stretch can matter a great deal. And the fee is part of what a major league club weighs, so it can affect how much a team is willing to spend on the player.

None of the numbers in this article can tell you whether a particular player will succeed. The historical record shows only major league outcomes. It does not carry NPB statistics, posting fees or contract values, so those figures come from published reports. It also does not tell us what happens to players who never get the opportunity. For the broader international picture, including the tournaments where many of these players first faced American hitters, see the World Baseball Classic, the Premier12 and baseball at the Olympics. The path from youth baseball in Japan to the professional ranks begins with events like those covered in Koshien and Japanese high school baseball.

Common questions

Who decides whether a Japanese player is posted? His NPB club. The player can ask, but the club must agree.

Does the player get any of the posting fee? No. The fee goes to his Japanese club. The player's money is his MLB contract.

What happens if the player and the major league team cannot agree? The player stays with his Japanese club, and no fee is paid.

Is every Japanese player in the majors a posted player? No. Some, such as Senga, arrived as free agents after enough years of service, and Nomo arrived by retiring from his Japanese club.

Is the formula permanent? No. The agreement between MLB and NPB is renegotiated from time to time. Check the current text.

Where to go next

For the next layer of this story, read the international draft debate, which explains why bonuses for young international players are capped, and the World Baseball Classic, where Japan's best players meet MLB stars. You can see the major league ranks on the international page and browse the world baseball topic page. For how ties in the standings are settled, see how MLB tiebreakers work.