The Rangers and Yu Darvish agreed on a six-year contract:
Japan’s best pitcher and the Texas Rangers agreed before Wednesday’s deadline to a $60 million, six-year contract. In addition to the salary, the Rangers will pay a posting fee of about $51.7 million to pay to the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters of Japan’s Pacific League.
The deal came at the end of a 30-day negotiating window that began Dec. 19 when the Rangers’ bid to negotiate with the pitcher was accepted. Had a deal not been reached by the 4 p.m. CST deadline, Darvish would have remained with the Fighters and Texas would have kept the posting fee.
As far as salary goes, the Rangers are paying him like a back of the rotation starter. That may be right, given the limited success of pitchers from Japan moving to the United States. Darvish, however, is a bit younger, and really seems to be the cream of the crop from that country. I can’t wait to see him pitch against major league hitters.
Now, with that out of the way, do the Rangers have enough money left to sign Prince Fielder?
It’s almost exactly the same deal as the Sox gave Daisuke,and almost exactly the same posting fee. And people said about Daisuke almost exactly what you’ve just said about Darvish: cream of the crop, a special player, etc. Turns out the Sox overpaid, and by a huge amount. This seems like a very dubious move by the Rangers. It *might* work out, but I think the expected value is much lower than what they’ve put in the kitty.
Darvish is younger than Daisuke, more athletic looking, put up better numbers and was abused less.
He might need some more work on his secondary pitches though, and that park won’t help his numbers.
Still get a kick at how folks don’t count the posting fee when looking at japanese pitchers cost. Unless a team is up against the luxury tax threshold, there is no savings (Red Sox saved less than 10 million on the tax with Daisuke), and 111 million dollars is 111 million dollars, no matter how you slice it up, Darvish equivalent cost is 19 million a year for 6 years. Not bad for a MLB rookie, even if he only gets bit more than 1/2.
He better be better than a back end of the rotation guy for that money.
This is far greater than back-end rotation money: you need to discount the contract and the upfront money into today’s dollars and you will see it’s far more cash then a 3 or 4 starter.
Dave, I’m guessing you had a “Yu Never Give Me Your Money” post ready to go in case he hadn’t signed?
Jeff » Of course. From Yu’s point of view, however, he’s getting paid like a back of a rotation starter. I suspect this is why he wanted a shorter term deal, so he could hit the free agent market sooner and capture his full worth.
The posting fee, as far as the Rangers are concerned, is a capital investment. It’s the price they pay to capture Darvish’s residual value.
I don’t agree that Darvish is being paid “like a back of the rotation starter.” The total amount that the Rangers paid shows that they think he is an ace. Here is the complete list of pitchers making more (2011 numbers):
CC Sabathia
Johan Santana
Roy Halladay
This is not even adjusting for what Jeff pointed out, that the value is higher because much of the money is upfront. That would probably put Darvish second on the list.
From Darvish’s perspective, under the posting system much of his value was controlled by his Japanese team. Thus the Rangers also had to compensate the team to obtain him. It is halfway between a trade and a free agent signing. Even with this in mind, Darvish is getting one of the largest contracts someone with no MLB experience has ever gotten.