Yomiuri Giants veterans Masumi Kuwata and Kazuhiro Kiyohara top the list of eight players added to this year's group of free agents, the commissioner's officer of Japanese professional baseball said Monday.
The players were granted free-agent status following a meeting Sunday of baseball's executive committee which approved a players association request to shorten the qualifying period for second-time free agents from four years to three.
The qualification period for second-time free agents was extended from three to four years in 1997 when the period to qualify for free agency for the first time was shortened from 10 years to nine.
The players association, however, asked that the qualification period for a second-time free agent be returned to three years.
Along with Kuwata and Kiyohara, the commissioner's office added Yukio Tanaka (Nippon Ham), Takahiro Ikeyama (Yakult), Yutaka Wada and Makoto Sasaki (Hanshin), Hirofumi Kono (Lotte) and Takahisa Suzuki (Kintetsu) to this year's list of free agents.
A list of 57 players, mostly first-time qualifiers, who had qualified for free agency this offseason was released last week.
With Ikeyama named on last week's list and again on Monday, the total of 64 players have qualified to exercise their free agent's rights at the end of the season.
Kintetsu outfielder Suzuki, however, has already indicated that he will end his 16-year career as a player to become a coach.