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Justin Smoak, possibly starting a trend, finds his 2021 money in Japan

I don’t know, I could be wrong. But the biggest story from yesterday, to me, felt like the news that Justin Smoak found a baseball team that would pay him $6-7M and that baseball team was in Japan.

Specifically, he is finalizing a deal with the Yomiuri Giants, who unlike their MLB peers, are not pretending to be poor. Unlike their MLB peers, they play in a country that took COVID-19 seriously. If there are more of these type of transactions in the coming weeks, it could become a worrying trend for MLB, and one that might be the kick in the butt that many of the team owners appear to need.