6 years 52 million This posting fee is really screwing over these Japanese players. His team back in Japan made 51 million on the deal (and that's paid to them as soon as the contract is signed, not over a 6 year period). Red Sox rotation for 2007: Schilling Dice-K Beckett Papelbon Wakefield Red Sox are going to win the World Series barring major injuries to this pitching staff. I would move Jon Lester to the bullpen, although he will compete for that #5 spot in the rotation. Not convinced Papelbon's move to the starting rotation will suit him well (how do you argue with a sub 1.00 ERA as a closer?). Will be interesting to see if Boston goes after Clemens. I don't think they will now, which is good news for my Astros. Yankees have a guy named Pettitte who's elbow is about to go any minute now. Yankees now find themselves desperate to sign Andy's best friend Roger. They probably will. Johnson's career is all but over (unless he's come up with an off speed pitch this winter). They better sign Zito as well. Yankees, potentially: Zito or Clemens Wang Pettitte Mussina Johnson
This just in, Oliver Perez sucks. That was just an aberration. Thank you. Mets getting Zito makes the most sense. I hope they do.
that is true, and i wondered what what would happen if players and mlb just decided to tell the japanese league to go to hell and just take players who were willing to abandon the league and their contracts in japan. i figure it would be really destructive to japanese baseball. so mlb makes players fulfill the obligations of their japanese teams and will not let them just ditch out and come over. i guess that is good for the sport overall, and it is smart to keep the asian market happy, as they are big consumers of baseball and mlb makes lots of money from them with tv rights and whatnot. if players could just leave anytime and come to america, it would make japanese baseball into a minor league system for mlb. what i would like is if the leagues would integrate some other way, perhaps with a true world series, or even by sending each team to the other side for two weeks a season to play real games that count in the standings. that would be awesome. i like the model they use in english premier (soccer) league. all teams have a chance to be promoted to the elite level if they win enough. so in baseball, the hanshin tigers could be promoted to a major league team if they were good enough, and the kc royals would get demoted to AAA. and any team could get promoted/demoted. this way, any team in the world with the talent could play in the elite league and the world series. it would be awesome.
soccer leagues sell players off the same way. There are soccer clubs in Brazil that all they do is develop young players and then sell the signing rights to those players once they show promise. It's a nice way for some of the lower level teams to make/recoup money for developing talent. Imagine if the Expos back in the day could have sold the rights to all of the players they developed and couldn't resign in free agency. I agree with martin about the promotion and relegation of teams based on performance. It would be a big incentive for the lower level teams in the league to field a competitive team. If you fall out of the league based on your poor performance you wouldn't get a cut of the profit sharing.
like i mentioned earlier, boras was less than accurate when he described how much matsusaka deserved. he kept quoting what he would get as a free agent, which he certainly was not. and boston wasnt buying it. there was no competetition. matsusakas money couldnt be pushed up with multiple for him to choose from. it was sign with boston or nothing, back to the crap salary in japan. it would have really pissed me off if i was epstein to hear boras keep quoting these ridiculous numbers. in the end, the posting system ****ed everyone involved except seibu. teams couldnt make open market offers, matsusaka couldnt get paid his value, boston paid double what they are giving to the player. and smaller market teams never had a chance. they need to revamp the system, but it would be hard to concince the japs of this, because they made out like banditos.
Couldn't dice-k have waited until his contract was up and move to the states then? I mean I would assume at some point ole boy signed a contract with seibu and who can blame them for wanting to make some prime cash to let him out of the agreement.
