November 9th, 2006 → 12:14 am @ Seth Mnookin // No Comments
…of here? Okay, so that didn’t really work. But here goes anyway:
The bids are officially in for Japanese stud Daisuke Matsuzaka. (By bids, I mean the amount of money an MLB team will pay Matsuzaka’s Japanese team, the Seibu Lions, for the right to negotiate with Scott Boras for the right to sign Matsuzaka. Got that?) The CW is that the Red Sox, Mets, and Yankees all submitted bids, with the winning price expected to be somewhere around $20 mil. If that’s not confusing enough, Buster Olney raises the possibility a team could win the bidding and then trade the right to negotiate with Matsu. (Does that work as a nickname?)
In other baseball news, the Red Sox surprised exactly no one and declined to pick up Keith Foulke’s $7.5 option for 2007. Keith could still exercise his ’07 option for $3.75; if he doesn’t come back to Boston, he’ll be owed $1.5 million. The economics of baseball are so…logical.
I’m writing this from Springfield, after an incredibly lovely evening at the Springfield Public Forum; tomorrow I’ll get up at 4:30 for a 6 am train to NYC, and then I’ll grab a 11-ish flight to Virginia, after which I’ll drive out to North Carolina…which is to say I’ll be out of town at a multi-day Southern wedding extravaganza for the next couple of days. Just watch: my the end of the weekend the Sox will have signed Matsuzaka, traded for Dontrelle, and kidnapped Ryan Howard. And I’m sure folks will still find plenty of stuff to complain about.
Mude
18 years ago
Daisuke Matsuzaka’s nickname will depend entirely on where he ends up. If he’ll be a Yankee, I would imagine something along the lines of “Daisucky Matsusucka.” Personally, I like “Suke.”
I’m really bothered by the laziness in the press about the bidding number. A couple of weeks ago, some writers were speculating that the figure could top $30 million, but now everyone agrees that the winning bid will be “around $20 million.” It seems that one guy came up witht the number, and everyone else said, “sounds good.” What happened that this number (a) dropped so drastically and (b) became relatively definite? Did some info leak?
The thought of Foulke being on the Red Sox payroll to the tune of $5.25 million ($3.75 player option + $1.5, which he gets either way) doesn’t appeal to me. Seriously, thank you for 2004, Foulke. You’ll forever be a legend. But it’s time to go.
Actually, if he exercises the player option, he doesn’t get the other $1.5 – that only kicks in if he’s not on the team at all.
– Seth
HFXBOB
18 years ago
If Foulke hadn’t finished the year with those 11 runless appearances it would have been so easy to say goodbye. But that was tantalizing. I mean he’s only 34 and when he was good he was really good. Is it possible he finally shook off the injuries? I read a comment by someone to the effect of ‘don’t pay any attention to that good finish, it was garbage time late in the year.’ So does that mean the hitters weren’t trying to get hits? I dunno, I’d like to see the cantankerous SOB back myself, even if just as a setup guy. But that’s probably because I’m still living in 2004. Last night I watched the game 6 DVD again. After Foulke struck out Tony Clark on a full count with 2 on to end the game Joe Buck said, correctly, Foulke had been ‘amazing’ in the ALCS. Oh well, he’s probably not coming back regardless.
Mude
18 years ago
I got the $5.25 figure from the Cafardo article, to which you linked in your post. Is he wrong? Some of these contracts confuse me. The bit from the article:
“The team was expected to decline its option, and if Foulke doesn’t return, he’s owed a $1.5 million buyout; he also gets that if he exercises the $3.75 million option, bringing his total compensation to $5.25 million.”
Oops – you’re totally right. I need to work on my reading comprehension.
– Seth
redsoxtimes
18 years ago
I broke apart Foulke’s downfall as many ways as I could and think that it all comes down to health. Was it injury that cause dhim to lose 3-4 mph on his fastball and thus cause him to lose his ability to locate? If it was health related, and he is healthy, I think Foulke might surprise this year.