I know, I know, I’ve been missing in action. Work took me to Nairobi and Vienna, which means all the Dice-K news has come and gone.
Except that Gene Orza was quoted in the Globe as saying how unfair the posting system is, since the club gets all the money.
Gene Orza, the chief operating officer of the Major League Players Association, said yesterday the posting process has “such potential for abuse and fraud. Why should the [Japanese] club receive $51.1 million and the player is only getting, if the numbers in the papers are to believed, $7 or $8 million? That’s like saying the Cleveland Plain Dealer wants a Boston Globe writer and the Globe will let him go for $7 million, but $6 million of it goes to the Globe and the writer gets $1 million? What sense does that make? (Link)
The way I see it, posting is essentially a cousin to transfer fees in soccer. And the economics presumably would work out the same way: at the end of your contract, you’re a free agent, but if a team wants you early, it has to buy out your contract. Doesn’t seem to stop players in soccer from getting well-paid, I have to say - so from the player’s association point of view, I’m not sure Orza’s barking up the right tree.
After all, while the Marlins can’t post Dontrelle Willis, they can essentially get economic value for him before he hits free agency through trades, so there’s a sort of barter economy going on. Posting is just substituting cash for players.
This economics paper on the impact of the Bosman ruling on the economics of soccer might prove illuminating on the economics of a posting system. In brief - since Bosman created something akin to free agency in soccer, there were fears of massive transfers from clubs to players causing economic collapse, but the system adapted. Since the posting system is similar, I presume that, sure, the club gets the money in posting , but the system I presume adapts so that the players get a significant chunk of that money.