Nikkan Sports reports that Senichi Hoshino feels the current agreement between the Japan Professional Baseball Players Association (JPBPA) and the NPB that prevents teams from contacting senryokugai players from other teams until after the first round of tryouts does nothing but hurt players.

The agreement was apparently created in order to put all senryokugai players on equal footing.  That is, since teams hand out senryokugai notices to players at different times, players that receive their notices early on may end up having a better chance at signing than those that receive their notices toward the end of the senryokugai notification period unless there is a rule in place that prevents all senyokugai players from speaking to teams until a specified date, which in this case is the first round of tryouts.  Hoshino believes otherwise.

While Hoshino does not plan on breaking the current agreement, he feels that competition is part of what it means to be a professional athlete and that too much importance is being place on fairness.  And since teams can give foreign players tryouts and make trades, most rosters are close to being set by the time the first round of tryouts begins.  That in turn puts the senryokugai players in a tough spot.

Case in point: the Eagles were interested in Tsuyoshi Shimoyanagi and wanted to give him a multi-day tryout during fall camp.  But because of the agreement, did not.  Instead, they got to see Shimoyanagi face a few batters during the first tryout on the 24th and felt they did not have enough information to go to sign him.

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