推 Gcp:proven starter 看起來就是很爽~ 11/07 09:33
The New York Times
By TYLER KEPNER
Published: November 5, 2006
Like a toll on a turnpike or a personal seat license at a new stadium, an
upfront fee is required these days for a 26-year-old ace pitcher from Japan.
The bidding for Daisuke Matsuzaka has begun, and no one knows quite how high
it will go. But these facts are irrefutable: Teams are desperate for power
starting pitchers, and Matsuzaka’s agent, Scott Boras, is not known for
discounts, even when negotiating with only one team.
When asked how to get fair value for a player who goes through the Japanese
posting process, Boras said: “I think for a midlevel player, it would have
an effect. But when you have a player this gifted, the loss of the player’s
skill is outcome-determinative to your team.”
The posting process is a system used by Japanese players who want to play in
the majors but do not have the service time to be free agents. Matsuzaka has
seven full years of service; Japanese players must have nine years to become
a free agent.
Matsuzaka’s team, the Seibu Lions, made him available for posting through
the Japanese commissioner’s office. That office contacted the Major League
Baseball commissioner’s office, which notified all 30 teams late Thursday.
Thus began a window of four business days for teams to submit sealed bids to
Lou Melendez, a vice president of Major League Baseball. The bidding ends at
5 p.m. Wednesday, when baseball will notify the Lions of the amount of the
highest bid, but not the team that submitted it.
The Lions then have four business days to accept or reject the bid. If they
reject, they will keep Matsuzaka. If they accept, Matsuzaka has 30 days to
negotiate with the team that made the bid. If he fails to work out a
contract, he returns to Japan, and the bid is returned to the team that made
it.
The winning bid is expected to be around $20 million, with the Yankees, the
Mets, the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs among the teams said to be
interested.
All sides have incentive to make a deal. The winning bidder will badly want
Matsuzaka, a hard-throwing right-hander who went 17-5 with a 2.13 earned run
average this season. And Matsuzaka badly wants to play in the majors.
“During these past two years, my feeling toward participating in Major
League Baseball has grown more and more,” he said last week, through an
interpreter, at a Tokyo news conference. He added: “I’m not nervous about
anything. I think I have to raise my level a bit, but I think I have it
within me to succeed.”
The Lions will almost certainly accept the bid. The team is in financial
peril after the conviction in October 2005 of its owner, Yoshiaki Tsutsumi,
for insider trading and falsifying company records.
Tsutsumi, whom Forbes magazine once ranked as the richest man in the world,
is a resort and railroad mogul who pleaded guilty to conspiring with other
executives to falsify the financial statement of Seibu Railway in 2003. He
was fined and given a suspended prison sentence.
If the Lions hold onto Matsuzaka, they may very well wind up with nothing in
return. By posting him, they will get a windfall. Precisely how much, though,
may never be known.
Quoting an unnamed Lions executive, the Japanese newspaper Sankei Sports
reported last Friday that three unidentified major league teams had
approached the executive about setting up a prearranged deal for Matsuzaka.
The executive told the newspaper that he did not engage the teams in
conversation because he considered it tampering. But, in theory, a team could
effectively tell the Lions: “We want to get Matsuzaka. What if we bid $50
million to make sure we win his rights, and then we paid you $20 million?”
The Seattle Mariners had a working agreement with the Orix Blue Wave, Ichiro
Suzuki’s old team, before winning his negotiating rights with a $13 million
bid in 2000. There have long been rumors that the Mariners never had to pay
the full amount.
The baseball spokesman Pat Courtney said that in a case like Matsuzaka’s,
the commissioner’s office would ask for a copy of the paperwork between the
Japanese team and the major league team. Courtney also said one team could
not block another from signing Matsuzaka by submitting an outrageous bid
(say, $100 million) and then not negotiating in good faith with Boras.
“That would be something we would have to get involved in,” Courtney said,
adding that the team with the next-highest bid would probably win negotiating
rights.
Still, a feeling persists in some circles that the posting system is far from
ideal.
“There are a lot of holes in the system, so some teams can cheat,” said
Gaku Tashiro, a baseball reporter for Sankei Sports. “That’s not a fair
system. If you have a good connection to the team, you can do anything you
want to. Also, the Japanese player cannot choose the team.”
Boras has tried to give Matsuzaka some control over his destination. The
Seattle Mariners said last week that they would not make a bid, without
stating a reason. The Los Angeles Dodgers also publicly dropped out, citing
the cost.
Boras would not say so directly, but he might have let those teams know that
Matsuzaka did not want to play for them.
“We’ve been candid with teams about where we would want to go, or more
importantly where we would not want to go,” Boras said. “And you’ve
probably seen the response to that.”
Whoever lands Matsuzaka will have a potential top-of-the-rotation starter,
but a pricey one. The Yankees, in particular, can attest to the importance of
starting pitching.
In 13 postseason games since taking a three-games-to-none lead over the Red
Sox in the 2004 American League Championship Series, the Yankees’ starters
have gone 2-7 with a 5.82 E.R.A. Not surprisingly, the Yankees have lost 10
of those 13 games.
But a larger question is whether it is wise to pay top dollars to free-agent
pitchers. The St. Louis Cardinals just won the World Series with a rotation
that included no pitchers who had signed rich-free agent deals with the team.
Chris Carpenter initially signed with St. Louis for one year and $500,000
because he was an injured free agent. Jeff Suppan was a bargain (three years,
$10 million) coming off two shaky months in Boston. Jeff Weaver had been
designated for assignment by the Angels.
The Yankees have Randy Johnson signed for $16 million and would like to bring
back Mike Mussina at a cost of more than $10 million a year.
Two winters ago, they paid premium prices for Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright,
ignoring a track record of injuries and concentrating instead on their
performance the year before free agency.
The Yankees do have a young, inexpensive and proven starter in Chien-Ming
Wang, along with the 20-year-old Phil Hughes, who dominated Class AA last
season.
The free-agent market offers other starters besides Matsuzaka, including
Suppan and Weaver. But it is considered a mediocre pool, headlined by Barry
Zito, Jason Schmidt, Gil Meche and Ted Lilly. Two others — Roger Clemens and
Andy Pettitte — are unsure if they want to keep pitching.
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