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The Texas Rangers have won the rights to negotiate with Japanese pitcher Yu Darvish by submitting the highest bid to do so.
The Rangers bid $51.7 million which bested the sum put up by the Boston Red Sox before the 2007 season for Daisuke Matsuzaka of $51.1 million. Matsuzaka has been plagued by inconsistency and injuries in his five-year career in the majors.
The 25-year-old Darvish went 18-6 with 232 innings pitched and an era of 1.44 for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters this past season. The Rangers were interested in Darvish all along even sending general manger Jon Daniels to Japan to scout one of his games. Rangers just lost starting pitcher CJ Wilson to divison rival the Los Angeles Angels and hope this will go along to filling that void.
The team has until January 18, 2012 to sign Darvish to a contract or he will go back to his former club and the Rangers will regain their posting fee. Darvish was thrust into the public eye after pitching well during the 2009 World Baseball Classic.
According to sources the Toronto Blue Jays were second in the bid for Darvish's services but their bid was not made public.
There are concers about Darvish's transistion to a hitters ballpark in Arlington and going from pitching once a week to pitching on four days rest.
From The Sports Mind Of RB:
What is it with teams paying big money for players they have rarely seen or scouted? Okay Ichiro Suzuki is probably going to the Hall of Fame and I will give you Hideki Matsui but look at the rest. As I mentioned earlier Daisuke Matsuzaka has been brutal, Hideki Okajimi has not been the same pitcher since his first year with the Red Sox, Kaz Matsui was so bad for the Mets he could make me look good and the Twins shortstop Tsuyoshi Nishioka had a miserable season.
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