It'll be worth it just to hear Berman call him Yu "Whirling" Darvish. Time after time after time.

So will he end up with the Yankees or the Red Sox or the...wait, I guess that's it. The Yankees or Red Sox. Gotta love baseball's salary structure.

I reckon it'll take about 150m to get Darvish; $75m posting fee, $75m for a six year contract.

So will he end up with the Yankees or the Red Sox or the...wait, I guess that's it. The Yankees or Red Sox. Gotta love baseball's salary structure.

So true! Just like what happened with Beltran, and Soriano, and Santana, and Torii Hunter, and Miguel Cabrera, and Vlad, and Carlos Lee, and Andruw Jones, and Zito...

Now, if you're just talking about posting fees, I could point out Fukudome, or I could say that I'm sure the Yankees would be happy to have Kei Igawa's fee back. As for Daisuke, who knows. I think he's been worth it, but many others don't.

...and Ichiro, and Fukodome

So will he end up with the Yankees or the Red Sox or the...wait, I guess that's it. The Yankees or Red Sox. Gotta love baseball's salary structure.

The Red Sox are fourth in salary this year, and much closer to the rest of the top tier than the Yankees. The Mets had the #2 bid on Matsuzaka, ahead of the Yankees.

I think it is a fair bet that the next time a major Japanese player is posted, some team makes an exorbitantly high posting bid and then tries to extract corresponding concessions out of the player in contract negotiations. The Red Sox had success with this approach with Dice-K, but I could see a team taking an even more extreme approach. If you can't sign the player, you don't pay the fee and nobody else gets the player anyway. No harm, no foul. Frankly, the current system is so broken that I can't see another major player being posted without significant revisions to the process.

If you can't sign the player, you don't pay the fee and nobody else gets the player anyway. No harm, no foul.

I thought if you didn't sign the player, the next highest bidder got a shot, as long as the posting team was willing to accept the next highest bid.

I think teams are required to negotiate in good faith when they win negotiation rights through the posting process, it's written in the rules somewhere to prevent teams from blocking the posting process.

I think teams are required to negotiate in good faith when they win negotiation rights through the posting process, it's written in the rules somewhere to prevent teams from blocking the posting process.

This is true and I believe, so long as a team negotiates in good faith, the player reverts to their Japanese team if no agreement is reached. If a team doesn't negotiate in good faith, I believe the player's rights are awarded to the next highest bidder, provided the Japanese team accepts their bid. We had about a million of these discussions at the time Dice-K was posted, but I think a lack of good faith would be very difficult to prove.

He's Dice K 2.0. Does that mean he has really good stuff but pitches like a finesse guy and not throw it near the strike zone? Love those guys.

Kosuke was a free agent, he wasn't posted. Matsuzaka changed things when it comes to posting fees, if similar screwy things go on with Darvish, the system's gonna be overhauled.

If MLB were smart, they'd do a (weighted) lottery where the winning team would get the chance to sign the guy. Three teams would be selected in the lottery. Each team would get 10 days to try and sign the player. Team No. 1 would get first crack, Team no.2 the second crack, and Team no.3 the final chance. If none of them succeeded in signing him, he'd go back to Japan. Now here's the clincher: if the Royals got, say, lottery ball no. 2, they could trade it to the Yankees for prospects and such, but it would be calculated risk for the Yankees, because if Team no.1 (let's just say the Blue Jays) was able to sign the player, the Yankees would have given up prospects for nothing.

It'd be great. It'd be awesome. It'd never happen, but it would still be great.

What about Japan, you say? Simple... a amount of money that is the same amount as being paid to the player would need to be sent to Japan by the club.

Here's my question and it may be a stupid one that's been answered several times before so feel free to yell at me if thats the case but.....Is there some kind of rule preventing MLB teams from signing Japanese players as amateur free agents? From what I've gathered after reading about Darvish, Matsuzaka and other players who have come across the Pacific is that most of these players were identified at a relatively early age as having the potential to become great. Major league teams have never been shy about signing foreign talent at a relatively young age especially from Latin America (e.g. Adrian Beltre)and other parts of Asia (Byung-Hyun Kim from Korea as a 19 yr old and Chien Ming Wang from Taiwan as a 20 year old) so what keeps MLB from pilfering talent from Japan before they are drafted and signed to pro contracts by the NPB? Thanks.

There's either a formal or a gentleman's agreement preventing drafted Japanese amateurs from signing with MLB teams, but undrafted ones are free game (as it should be). The Bosox recently signed the top pitcher from the Shikoku Independent Leagues (thought the level of play in that league's not that high.)

It's a gentleman's agreement that I don't see anyone in MLB being shortsighted enough to break. There are a lot more North American prospects than Japanese every year, and in the short term you'd be giving each of them a little bit more leverage. In the long term, the NPB dies and MLB is deprived of what is basically becoming a mostly self-sufficient developmental league.

The Red Sox are fourth in salary this year, and much closer to the rest of the top tier than the Yankees.

Does this include the pro-rated portion of the 50 million dollar bid for Matsuzaka?

IT doens't count toward the cap

Does this include the pro-rated portion of the 50 million dollar bid for Matsuzaka?

If you count it that way (which no one seemed interested in doing last year, but I think is the proper method), then they jump to No. 2, but still fairly close to the Mets and Tigers.

It's a gentleman's agreement that I don't see anyone in MLB being shortsighted enough to break. There are a lot more North American prospects than Japanese every year, and in the short term you'd be giving each of them a little bit more leverage. In the long term, the NPB dies and MLB is deprived of what is basically becoming a mostly self-sufficient developmental league

I realize there are several more prospects in North and South America than in Japan, but I was only arguing that every year there must be a few standout amateur prospects that emerge from Japan that could be identified as potential MLB players. Maybe I'm being cynical about this but it seems like it would have to be something more formal than a gentleman's agreement to get every MLB team to respect not interfering with amateur players in Japan. For example let's say a small market team has a .00001 percent chance of winning a bid of 50+ million dollars to negotiate with a player after he becomes a star in Japan. What would be the incentive for not trying to swoop in when that player is just leaving high school/college, signing him to a nice deal far below the tens of millions a posting offer would require, developing the player in their own system and then controlling his rights for his first six years as a pro. Several small market teams have kept themselves competitive by mining for foreign talent in hopes of striking gold and by opening baseball academies and such.

I've been to Japan and I was fortunate enough to attend a NPB game while I was there. It was an exhilirating experience and I am by know means trying to be disrespectful to the NPB or their fans by saying MLB should raid and destroy their league and leave their teams devoid of talent. If anything I hope the two sides have some agreement that keeps the NPB independent and strong. I was just curious as to why some progressive franchise or enterprising GM outside of the 12-14 teams that reasonably have a chance of putting up a winning posting bid for a star player had not tried to circumvent the system and acquired a talented young Japanese player before they had given up their amateur status. I think Wang was signed for a million dollar bonus. So let's say a team like the Pirates signs a Darvish type prospect for that kind of bonus money when he's 18, bring him over groom him in the minors and control his rights here until he becomes an FA. This would seem to make more sense for them then waiting for six years just to watch the Yankees/Mets/Red Sox/Dodgers/Mariners/Cubs bid 50 million to talk to the guy and another 50 million before he even throws a pitch. A Kei Igawa level mistake is just water under the money bridge for a team like the Yankees but it would be absolutely crippling to the Royals and would prevent them from even taking a risk of that level so the NPB may be a developmental league but only for a handful of teams who can afford it.