Yu Darvish E-Ticket Article

I'm surprised the Red Sox are being pushed as big suitors this year. I'd imagine the Yanks would easily outbid them after freeing up payroll

New York seems to be a where all Japanese pitchers go die. After the Igawa flop I wonder if Cashman really has the stomach to bid top dollar.

My guess is that Cashman would rather grab a proven pitcher like C.C. Sabathia than spend 80 million on another hit or miss phenom.

Including the posting and contract Daisuke got, he costs around 17 mil a year before he ever threw a pitch in the ML. So spending roughly 22 mil on Yu is far more realistic than you may think. Darvish is six and a half feet of pure nastiness.

I don't see him coming over for maybe a couple more years. He's doing his rock star thing in Japan right now and enjoying it.

Ichiro to Seattle, Kuroda to LA, Fukudome to the cubs, Rays tried their hand on the closer but he was a bust if ever there was one. plenty of teams get the foreign talent.

1. Ichiro was posted

2. Kuroda and Fukudome were both free agents and look to both be slotting into the roles they were signed for

3. The smaller market clubs could easily afford the free agents, but they usually prefer the large cities. The smaller market clubs need to make more of an effort to sell their cities.

On Fukudome - In retrospect, it would have been a hell of a deal for the Dodgers to pick him up instead of Jones. Cheaper, much more productive and it would allow Kemp to play CF where he belongs.

baseballcube.com has both Darvish and Matsuzaka's stats -- Darvish at 21 has already had a better season then Dice-K ever did. So if he gets posted in the next few seasons, he'll be better and younger (and also without the wear on his are that DiceK has) so why wouldn't he get significantly more then Dice-K?

I think that you are debating whether the players I listed are actually good. If I am right about that answering your question is probably a waste of time but its not like I have anything better to do.

Ari said that Ichiro is the only Japanese player who “panned out” that didn’t play in NY or Boston. I don’t agree with that statement and listed off the top of my head a bunch of Japanese players who have had successful careers in the MLB outside of those cities. I listed Kaz Matsui and he did play in NY so I blew that one.

It is pretty easy to name players who haven’t had good seasons. Mike Schmidt hit 198 for an entire season. Should we be on the phone with the Cooperstown police? Curt Schilling was traded twice by the time he got to Philly and went 2-8 in 94. Am I supposed to believe that he wasn’t good. It seems like you may be a LAD fan so here’s one for you, Koufax pitched 4 full seasons and parts of 2 others before he had success. I guess the Hall blew that one too. Jim Edmonds, Mark McGwire all guys who had bad seasons. That doesn’t make you a bad player. Seriously, that took less than two minutes this website doesn’t have the capacity to list every good player who had a bad season because almost every player who ever played fits that bill.

Iguchi played well for a WS champion and was a key contributor for a Division winner last year. That is panning out. The fact that he hasn’t won an MVP or the 5 year waiting period isn’t getting waived doesn’t change that. Taguchi was a key contributor for a WS champion and has played in the Series twice. He’s a 280 career hitter and he 700 years old. He is a good player.

Rather than defend every player on that list, I’d like for someone to actually look the players up. The only way they don’t pan out is if fans or GMs had idiotic expectations.