KBO All-star Son Ah-seop’s team Busan Lotte Giants just announced today that they will ask the KBO to make Son available in a silent auction to be available for Major League teams. The 27 year old batted .317 with 13 home runs, 54 RBIs and 11 steals this season. He’s a career .323 hitter in the league, also playing great defense there in right field, he has hit at least .300 in 6 consecutive seasons with his team. In his 9 year tenure, Son also won 4 Gold glove awards (Note: unlike the Major Leagues… this award doesn’t acknowledge the defensive achievements… but instead awards the best players in each position), Son will also be the second player in the KBO to be posted this off-season.
Once Son have been posted, MLB clubs will have 4 business days to submit their bids, once the Lotte Giants have been informed of the highest bid, they will have 4 business days to reject or accept the bid… MLB clubs will put in their bids until Nov. 20, Korean time. MLB will notify the KBO of the winning bid on Nov. 21, and the South Korean league will inform the club the same day. The Giants will then have until Nov. 26 to make their decision. The winning bidder will have at least 30 days to negotiate a contract.
If Son failed to sign or garner interest by the deadline, he will stay, and Hwang Jae-gyun (28 yrs old) will be posted in his stead. Both players are currently in Taiwan right now representing their country in this Inaugural Premier 12 tourney
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Fan Interference 
Ren, I am woefully ignorant of the posting process. Does any of the money go to the player? Can players request to be posted? Is it all up to the clubs? Do the various leagues have different posting protocols?
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The process keeps changing, but I know some of these answers.
1) No, the players get $0 of the posting fee. Essentially, it is a fee to allow a negotiating window for the player, which will also let him out of his KBO (or NBL or where ever) contract.
2) Yes, a player pretty much has to request to be posted. Teams only get a fee if the player successfully negotiates a contract with the winning MLB team. If the player has no interest in going to MLB, then he won’t negotiate and the process would be a waste of time.
3) A player can request to be posted and the team can tell him to pound sand.
4) Not sure. The system has kept changing in an effort to make it more fair to the players by reducing the posting fee so more of the money spent is on actual contracts instead of $100M just for the right to negotiate with the player getting only a fraction in his contract.
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Thanks, lions. Learn something new every day.
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Paper Lions nailed 1 2 and 3. As for number 4, The NPB is somewhat different compared to the KBO, the posting only has a limit fee of 20 million USD that MLB teams can bid when it comes to NPB players, you cannot go any higher than that said amount. The KBO has no money limit when it comes to it’s posting fee, at least that’s what media outlets said, though.
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Thanks for noting this. I knew the NPB (which for some reason I always think of as the NBL – Nippon Baseball League) had the change to a $20M maximum bid….wasn’t sure if that was applied to other leagues or not as each league had its own agreement.
As an aside, what is the process for players moving between the NPB and KBO? Or does that not happen unless a player is a free agent?
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Not sure how many teams will be interested. Seems like a bench player with the apparent lack of power for a RFer….not sure what his power and contact rates translate into as far as MLB offense.
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That was my thinking as well. KBO is not as good as NPB, and if he performs at even 80% of his KBO level he’s a fourth outfielder at absolute best.
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