Cheech Tremendous

Peter Gammons reports that the Red Sox have won the Matsuzaka sweepstakes with a bid of $42 million. They will have 30 days to negotiate a contract once Seibu announces the acceptance of the bid. Holy shit, this is so awesome. I knew the Sox would try to make a splash in the offseason, but I never thought they would have the resources for Dice-K. Hopefully he's the ace of the staff for the next 5-10 years.

Totally jacked from FJM, but look at the numbers comparison between Crede and A-Rod. This is so spectacularly retarded. Yankees fans have convinced the entire world that this guy can't hit anymore. 2006 Silver Slugger Award-Winner Joe Crede: .283/.323/.506 28 BB 30 HR .278 EqA ARod, Who Can't Hit in the Clutch and Is a Head-Case: .290/.392/.523 90 BB 35 HR .317 EqA

They might as well pick it up. It's a one-year option, so it's not like we are talking long-term financial commitment. This is a year where Zito might get $17 or $18 million, and yesterday's garbage like Weaver and Suppan could go over $10M. Why not stick with the devil you know?

I love David Ortiz, but even I wouldn't try and argue him over Hafner. Hafner had a superior BA, OBP, SLG and VORP to Ortiz, and even though Hafner missed time, so too did Ortiz. He was the best hitter in all of baseball last year, regardless of position. Not that Guerrero or Dye were bad choices, but Sizemore smokes them as well in most hitting categories. Crede and his .323 OBP and 108 OPS+ shouldn't be anywhere near a hitting award. A-Rod had a bad year, but he still had a VORP over 50 and OPS+ of 140. Howard over Pujols is defendable, but an odd choice as well. Pujols was still a hair better, even with Howard's gaudy HR stats.

Baseball America released their list of the top 10 Red Sox prospects today. After having a top system the past couple of years, the cupboard is extremely bare. Andy Marte, Jonathon Papelbon, Craig Hansen, Manny Delcarmen, Hanley Ramirez, Cla Meredith, Kelly Shoppach, Anibal Sanchez, Dustin Pedroia and Jon Lester all graduated to the big leagues last year, either with the Sox or somewhere elsewhere in a trade. 1. Jacoby Ellsbury, of 2. Clay Buchholz, rhp 3. Michael Bowden, rhp 4. Daniel Bard, rhp 5. Lars Anderson, 1b 6. Dustin Pedroia, ss 7. Bryce Cox, rhp 8. Craig Hansen, rhp 9. Kris Johnson, lhp 10. Jason Place, of The Red Sox did have the no. 1 and no. 2 ranked drafts in 2006 and 2005 respectively, so help is on the way. But for know, they are behind Yankees for supremancy in the AL East.

No Travis Hafner, A-Rod or Grady Sizemore? I thought this award was supposed to go to the best hitters in the league. What the hell are these people looking at when they are voting?

Man, I really don't like the fact that Cashman has free reign over the Yankees' decisions now. First he rapes the Phillies for Abreu, then trades the far inferior Sheffield for some good pitching prospects. With the Yankees spending money AND developing the farm, it will be near impossible for the Red Sox or any other team to supplant them in the east. Second, can we get some baseball coverage that doesn't suck? I know that you can't expect analysts to keep up on every prospect out there, but you would think that we could get better analysis than "Sheffield traded for three minor leaguers." I don't even follow the Tigers and I know how good Sanchez is supposed to be. BPro has him as the 11th best right hand pitching prospect in baseball.

The free agent market may be even crazier than we are all expecting. Adding to the Drew thing, Keith Foulke declined his $3.75 million option to remain with the Red Sox. The guy has barely pitched the past two years (and when he has he's been ineffective) and was contemplating retirement as late as a month ago because of his bad knees. I couldn't imagine someone giving him $4 or $5 million to pitch, but he must know something that we don't.

I don't think I can wait a whole weekend to know who won the bidding. This has the potential to be the most important free agent signing for the next five years. Dan Patrick and espn.com have both picked up on the Olney story. Olney originally reported it as speculation, but the news services are presenting it as fact. Have they misinterpreted the original tidbit, or have their fact checkers cued into the Red Sox bid? Doesn't seem like they'd go full steam ahead with the story, especially one from the notoriously bad Olney, unless there was some sort of substantiation behind it.

We should all know by now that Buster Olney is full of shit, especially when it comes to Red Sox news. The guy is just a Yankees homer, and doesn't seem to be well-sourced at all. Remember the Lowell for Peavy trade that was going to happen? Exactly. Peter Gammons, who is still the most credible source out there, says that there have been zero leaks and any guess you've heard is just that, a guess. He believes the Yankees, Mets, Sox, Rnagers, Cubs, Diamondbacks, and Indians made bids (might have been others, but I'm doing this off what I can remember from the interview). As far why Seibu hasn't accepted the bid yet, it comes down to a couple of possibilities. For one, the team is in dire financial straits. If they feel the bid won't justify how much revenue they'll lose with Matsuzaka gone, they might be considering declining. Also, from what I understand about Japanese business culture, every person gets their chance to speak before any decision making takes place. Lastly, the meeting was at 2PM Friday, Japanese time. If they didn't come to an agreement before 5, they'd likely hold off the announcement until Monday.

The Red Sox will probably offer Drew something like 4/$52 million. He's going to make way more this offseason than he would have made in his old deal. Drew is a far superior player to Alfonso Soriano, Carlos Lee and any other outfielder on the market this year. Why wouldn't you pay him? By the way, he's been healthy two of the past three years, and the only reason he missed time in '05 was because he was hit on the wrist by a pitch. That's a freak accident, not a durability issue.

Quick prediction: JD Drew is a Red Sox next year.

Hey viva, what's the status on Brad Lidge? Are the Astros looking to move him this offseason? What are they expecting back in return?

She could always join the rodeo.

"Wu Tang Is For The Children!" really. did you really need to waste a post on that. odb was funny. you're not. Why you getting on his case? That was the funniest rapper meltdown of all time.

It's even simpler than that. Seibu doesn't even look at all the bids. MLB calls them up and says "the high bid is xxx. Do you accept?" Shouldn't really be any hand-wringing over it, unless the bid is too low and they decide that it makes more sense to keep him. I don't see that as a likely scenario. But this guy is a megastar in Japan, so perhaps the team has to at least put up the facade that they aren't selling out their best and most recognizable player for a few extra yen in their pockets.

They probably aren't the ideal design, but considering that their old uniforms were by far the worst in all of baseball, it's hard to complain too much.

Microfracture knee surgery... it's fantastic!

So one day later on Matsuzaka and this is what we've heard: -Poster on NYYfans (who is very well-sourced) says the Yankees won with $27 million -Dallas radio station says that the Rangers won with a bid of $25 million -NESN reported that the Angels won with a bid in the low 20s -A rep from the Phillies stated the Mets won with $26 million -A Japanese newspaper says the Diamondbacks won with something in the low teens -A MLB representative says the numbers are right, but no one has correctly guessed the winning team So... we know nothing still! I am shocked that this thing has been kept under wraps for so long. Seibu has a board meeting at 12ET Friday morning... hopefully we know something by then. This has been a very interesting process to say the least. And on a sidenote, I think it is bad for baseball if the Yankees lat Mats and he is a success. The Yankees and Mariners are the only teams with any visibility in Japan. It just further skews the disadvantages to the large market teams if the posting system remains the way it is and the big keep getting bigger (still secretly hoping the Sox win the bid - shh).

Cashman already said that the Yankees are losing money. http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/news/story?id=2557770 For accounting purposes, they might be losing money, but rest assured the Yankees are making money. The revenues they receive from the YES network, which are not subject to revenue sharing, keep them in the black. Plus they are going to throw all the stadium costs on the ledger in the near term and show great losses when the true cost is likely amortized over the life of the project.

Between last year's salary and the buyout he received from the Knicks, Larry Brown pocketed $28.5 million for one year's work. That's more than $1 million per win. He's also 100% free to coach anywhere else if he likes. I want him and his agent to negotiate my next salary increase at my current job, or I want to work for Isiah Thomas, whichever opportunity comes first.

But you have to remember that even though it costs $20 million plus to negotiate, it doesn't cost you draft picks, players or prospects. It also doesn't count towards the luxury tax. So yes, it is a lot of money up front to give out for an unsure thing, but it could probably be made up easily with increased revenue from the Japanese market. I know hindsight is 20/20 and all, but this guy is projected to be a much better ballplayer than any of the previous Japanese transfers. He'll probably never reach the expectations being set for him, but scouts and statheads alike seem to think this guy is a top 15 starter right out of the gate. If that's true, he will be best pitcher on the FA market for a long time. Look at it this way, let's say Justin Verlander or Jerad Weaver or Francisco Liriano was a free agent this offseason. How much would you pay for them? Young pitcher with a little bit of success against major leaguers and out of this world stuff. How high would you go to lock that player up his peak years?

Some outlets are reporting that the Yankees have won with a bid of $27 million. That's not confirmed, but certainly sounds plausible. Seibu has the bid in hand now, and could announce as early as tomorrow as to whether or not it will be accpeted.

Bidding ended at 5PM today on Matsuzaka's posting rights. Rumor has it that the we might know the winning bid sometime tonight or tomorrow. Yankees have already confirmed that they made a bid, but the Red Sox and the Mets will neither confirm nor deny that they have. Word out of Japan this afternoon was that the posting might be under $20 million instead of $30-$40 that was expected, but it's all a crapshoot at this point. We really don't know anything, which makes this entire post somewhat irrelevant, but whatever it's a big news story.

I might need to look a little deeper into the two prospects they got, but on the surface that seems like a really stupid trade for the Padres. I know that it is just probably a precursor to trading for Marcus Giles, but Barfield is probably on his way to becoming quite the talent. As for the Indians, they are putting together a team that could be unbelievably good in a couple of years.