Every now and then I find myself perusing websites/blogs that cover various international professional baseball leagues and players. NPB Tracker is very informative IMHO and the fonder and main contributer, Patrick Newman, is very responsive to emails. I think he would be a great member here at Sosh (if he is not already.) I read with great interest his update from yesterday on the projected payrolls of each of the 12 teams in the NPB for the 2014 season and thought I would share it here. Patrick's take-aways from the data:
What I found interesting is 7 of the 12 teams projected payroll will be under $25 million (US) and thats for all their players under contract which includes minor leaguers. The Rakuten Eagles, who posted Tanaka this year, has a projected payroll of $27 million (US). NPB also has the equivalent of a "practice squad" (Ikusei) who can practice and wear uniforms with 3 digits (over 100) who are not included in these numbers... I doubt they would be paid too well.
There is a chart with all the team\s payrolls listed, but I couldnt figure out how to post that. Here is the original link:
http://www.npbtracker.com/2014/02/2014-npb-payrolls/#content
If this should be posted somewhere else, please feel free to move.
- 91 NPB players make JPY100m (about $1m) or above. 65 are Japanese, 26 are foreign.
- Japan’s highest-paid player is Yomiuri catcher Shinnosuke Abe at JPY600m ($6m). He actually turned down a higher salary for Yomiuri, because he felt he was not ready to surpass the JPY610m that Hideki Matsui made in his final season with the Giants.
- The highest paid foreign player is Rakuten’s Andruw Jones, at JPY400m. I believe he’s being paid in dollars, in the amount of $3.8m. To get a better idea of how foreign players are paid, read this post.
- The lowest paid shihaika roster player is Rakuten rookie pitcher Ryuta Konno, at JPY4.4m ($44k).
What I found interesting is 7 of the 12 teams projected payroll will be under $25 million (US) and thats for all their players under contract which includes minor leaguers. The Rakuten Eagles, who posted Tanaka this year, has a projected payroll of $27 million (US). NPB also has the equivalent of a "practice squad" (Ikusei) who can practice and wear uniforms with 3 digits (over 100) who are not included in these numbers... I doubt they would be paid too well.
There is a chart with all the team\s payrolls listed, but I couldnt figure out how to post that. Here is the original link:
http://www.npbtracker.com/2014/02/2014-npb-payrolls/#content
If this should be posted somewhere else, please feel free to move.