Tazawa's fate is decided and Mariners mull Ng

Ben Platt/MLB.com

Thanks to my favorite (non-Examiner) site, Baseball Digest Daily, for covering two stories of importance for Asian athletes. Junichi Tazawa, and others who skip the Japanese baseball draft, learned his fate yesterday, while the Mariners are interviewing several GM candidates, including a woman who could become the first female and first Asian GM in MLB.

Tazawa first: the young phenom announced last month that he'd forego the Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) amateur draft this year, heading straight to Major League Baseball (MLB) here in the States. Tazawa was only the third player ever to go this route, and certainly the most prestigious, and his announcement set off a firestorm of controversy within NPB and between NPB and MLB.

One of the issues centered around access for MLB scouts, which is more lenient than that allowed of NPB scouts, and that remains unresolved. Also still dangling in the air is the "gentleman's agreement" that existed between MLB and NPB for the past forty-plus years. It basically said--inasmuch as unwritten agreements "say" anything--that MLB teams would leave Japanese players alone.

A vote among the 12 NPB teams answered some of the latter questions, as the clubs unanimously decided that players who go straight to MLB out of high school would be banned from NPB for three years, while amateur players who finish college before skipping out on NPB would have a two-year ban.

As momentous as this sounds, it's a relatively meaningless ban, since anyone drafted by MLB would be given at least two, if not three, years to prove himself. It will discourage lesser players from trying to jump straight to MLB, but those lesser players are unlikely to be drafted anyway. Top-flight candidates like Tazawa will probably still opt to fly the coop, especially those at higher levels. How MLB will respond to this is unclear, but it's unlikely to dampen the ardor for player like Tazawa, who will be the first to suffer the ban if he goes through with his decision to forego the NPB draft.

If he does so, one of the teams slavering for his services are the Los Angeles Dodgers, one of baseball's most progressive teams as far as Eastern expansion goes. Their signing of Hideo Nomo opened the door for others to follow, and they have had a department dedicated to scouting in the Far East longer than anyone.

And when they were looking at a new General Manager in 2005, ultimately settling on Ned Colletti (a dubious choice, in retrospect), their close second choice was Kim Ng, the Dodgers Assistant General Manager. Ng has an incredibly impressive resume, including a tenure as AGM with the Yankees from 1998-2001, a period when they advanced to four World Series and won three of them.

As AGM for the Dodgers, she has received numerous accolades, from Baseball America's "10 to Watch" to earning the Dodgers 2006 Organization of the Year, also by BA. The Dodgers' website says that her "tenure at the Dodgers has been highlighted by dramatic improvement in scouting and player development." She has developed a reputation as a master at baseball's delicate arbitration process, where the team must present an honest assessment of a player's contribution without damaging team relationships with a player they are trying to keep. Winning the World Series this year with the team's young talent would cement her reputation as an executive of the future.

The Seattle Mariners, for one, are taking notice. Ng is among the GM candidates being interviewed, and her resume is certainly the most impressive. That she is both female and Asian would suit the city of Seattle's progressive reputation, and both the city and organization have strong ties to the Asian community. Regardless of her gender or ethnicity, Ng would be a valuable addition to a team that's been floundering for several years, particularly this year, when they became the first team with over $100M in payroll and 100 or more losses.

Baseball involves more than just throwing money at players; it requires development and scouting, to build an organization from the bottom up, as well as knowing who to choose in the free agent market. Former GM Bill Bavasi didn't understand this, but Kim Ng certainly would.

I'd love to see Seattle break ground with the first female, and first Asian, General Manager. Far from some sort of equal opportunity hire, Ng is a solid candidate with amazing credentials. Had she been a former player or part of baseball's "old-boy" network, she would have had a job long ago. It's past time for Seattle to make history for America's pastime and name Ng their new GM.