Yu Darvish
A hat tip to East Windup Chronicle for this one:
…the Yu Darvish to MLB rumors may have just officially kicked off right along with the new year. A Sports Hankook (Korea) report, relying on a Japanese source, says that the Yankees plan to nab Darvish following the 2008 season.
The report goes on to say that the Dodgers, Mets and Cubs have also made “love calls” to Darvish and that the floor of negotiations is something along the lines of what Daisuke Matsuzaka was able to command during his posting extravaganza in 2006.
Yu Darvish is a 6′ 5″, 21-year-old, Iranian-Japanese born, right-handed pitcher who was named Pacific League MVP in Nippon Professional Baseball last season. Click here to read more about him.
Let’s hope he’s not the Japanese version of Mike Witt, if he comes to to the Yankees.
Speaking of failed TJ recovery, what do you think the odds are of Pavano contributing the second half of next year?
Assuming we have a six man rotation, can we make one of these guys a bullpen long man?
Rasner
Karstens
Kei
Carl
Ha!
http://darvish-yu.jp/index.html
I’m glad Darvish finally got some love on the blog, Steve! Darvish is legit. He is the man. He’s not your typical cross-over star. He’s a big guy who throws low 90s and he is ridiculously durable. I’ve been following him thanks to Mike’s brilliant blog.
If the Yankees actually have a shot to get him that early (he’s still quite young) then they should do everything in their power to do so. He put up much better numbers at this age than Dice-K ever did.
By the way, anyone know why Mike never updated the blog after his “transition”?
Is there a posting issue, as one of the commenters on that blog brought up?
Well, I don’t see how one can say he “can’t” be posted for four years. The team can post him whenever they want, right?
I think the issue is that they can keep him for a few more years before losing him, so why would they post him instead of playing him? It seems far-fetched that he’ll be in the bigs in 2008 or 2009. He’s only 21. If he has two more years like this, he’ll still command a huge amount of money when he’s posted. The Red Sox have ruined this market now, though. Because of their ridiculous overreach on Mats, it’s probably going to take 65-100 million to get Darvish, who is younger and better than Dice-K is.
The blind bidding aspect of the posting system needs to be eliminated.
Is there a posting issue, as one of the commenters on that blog brought up?
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Could be; how did the Yanks land Katsuhiro Maeda?
For starters, teams do not post players, the player requests a posting from his team. The team then has the right to either approve or deny this request with no re-course by the player requesting. Nippon Ham owns his rights for another 6 full years, possibly longer if any injury time so can’t see him going anywhere till at least 2011/2012. This rumour is pure unsubstantiated speculation at the best.
For starters, teams do not post players, the player requests a posting from his team. The team then has the right to either approve or deny this request with no re-course by the player requesting. Nippon Ham owns his rights for another 6 full years, possibly longer if any injury time so can’t see him going anywhere till at least 2011/2012. This rumour is pure unsubstantiated speculation at the best.