The introduction of salary caps, which is the upper limit of the total annual salary for each club, seems to affect FA contracts as well. In particular, in the case of semi-final FA who are not part of the big fish level, it has become difficult for other teams to easily propose a transfer, making the options even narrower.

The Korea Baseball Organization KBO announced the total amount salary cap of the top 40 players per team’s annual salary on the 20th.

Salary caps have been introduced since this season. The initial ceiling of 11.4 billion won 10.24 million U.S. dollars, or 120 percent of the average annual salary of the top 40 players excluding foreigners and rookies in the annual salary between 2021 and 2022, was set.

No club exceeded this upper limit in 2023. However, half of the 10 clubs had less than 1 billion won in salary cap space.

Doosan Bears had only 244.63 million won to spare, followed by SSG Landers with 579.91 million won left. The LG Twins 628.88 million won, the Lotte Giants 779.71 million won, and the Samsung Lions 985.65 million won were also not comfortable.

The current cap will remain the same until 2025. Each club must closely follow the rules in order not to receive penalties such as sanctions.

Some clubs insist on raising the salary cap cap, but there is no justification for changing what was set only a year ago.

In the end, the upper limit of salary cap is likely to remain the same, which will inevitably affect the FA market atmosphere. This is because the total annual salary and future FA recruitment strategies should be considered as the same salary cap will be maintained until next year and the year after next year.

The most difficult position in this situation is, after all, a “quasi-class FA.” It is difficult to make a decision because it is difficult to give a large amount of money easily, and if you recruit another team’s FA, there will be additional leaks of compensation players or compensation.

FA, classified as a “big fish,” has little impact on salary caps because the cause of “power reinforcement” is strongly at work anyway. In the FA market alone, Ahn Chi-hong Lotte → Hanwha, 7.2 billion won for 4+2 years and Kim Jae-yoon KT → Samsung, 5.8 billion won for 4 years have moved their teams, while Yang Seok-hwan Doosan, 7.8 billion won for 4+2 years and Jeon Joon-woo four years, 4.7 billion won have renewed their contracts early.

Meanwhile, Hong Geon-hee Doosan, Ham Deok-ju LG, Sovereignty KT, Kim Min-sung LG, Kim Seon-bin KIA, and Lim Chang-min Kium have yet to hear from them. It is because it is burdensome to fill the salary cap by spending a lot of money.

Kiwoom Heroes -4.97438 billion won, which has the lowest salary cap exhaustion rate among the 10 clubs, is expected to enter the “rebuilding mode” for a while due to the departure of Lee Jung-hoo and Ahn Woo-jin, while Hanwha -2.895.38 billion won has already caught An Chi-hong, one of the biggest fish.

KT -1,99538 million won, which has the next low salary cap, is in a position to look further, with Ko Young-pyo and Um Sang-baek next year and Kang Baek-ho the following year.

In the end, staying in the original team is likely to be the best scenario for most of the quasi-class FA in this market.

The original team, which does not give compensation and compensation players, is less burdened than other teams. Lim Chan-kyu, who was classified as a “quasi-class” FA, also renewed his contract with LG for four years and 5 billion won on the 21st. Nearly half of the 5 billion won, 2.4 billion won, is an incentive based on performance.

Depending on the situation, there is a possibility of building a new nest through “sign and trade.” In this case, there is no compensation or compensation player, which reduces the burden somewhat. Lee Myung-ki NC→ Hanwha also moved in this way in the offseason last year. 스포츠토토

The FA market, which is affected by a new variable called salary cap. What is the final destination of the 11 FA players who still have not concluded their contracts.