Daisuke Matsuzaka -Let The Bidding Begin.

[nymr83]

Hopefully this will all get cleaned up. The problem is that from Boston's point of view they paid for exclusive rights, which means they shouldn't have to pay the guy like a free agent, because he isn't a free agent. Boras seems to think he's entitled to free agent money, Seibu got $51 million out this, shouldn't he get something too?

This system benefits Japanese teams at the expense of both Japanese players looking to come to America (who have no bargaining power) AND American teams who, at least in this case, could end up paying more in posting fee + contract than they would have with a regular free agent deal.

[duan]

Nymr83 wrote: Hopefully this will all get cleaned up. The problem is that from Boston's point of view they paid for exclusive rights, which means they shouldn't have to pay the guy like a free agent, because he isn't a free agent. Boras seems to think he's entitled to free agent money, Seibu got $51 million out this, shouldn't he get something too? This system benefits Japanese teams at the expense of both Japanese players looking to come to America (who have no bargaining power) AND American teams who, at least in this case, could end up paying more in posting fee + contract than they would have with a regular free agent deal.

Well I think it's more like Boras is saying "the guy is a free agent in 2 years time, at that point, he can get a deal for (lets say going by today's market) $ 20 million per year. You (the boston red sox) are paying 51 million FOR the right to sign him NOW, the right to be the only people to negotiate, and the right to lock him up.

Whereas, the red sox are thinking "well, our total cost of this acquisition should be (about) $85 million over 5 years (or Barry Zito money). That means that we can only pay him $35 million over 5 years."

The big issue for the Red Sox is that with the size of the posting fee, it takes too many years to bring the cost of acquisition down to a level where they can pay the player (broadly) for his worth. Don't forget, Matsuka's already been a top level baseball player for 7 years, why should he have to wait ANOTHER 5 years to get paid 'fair market value'. That's probably about 75% of TOP level player's career. (Moderate players' major league careers are A LOT shorter).

It has to be proven to Matsuka, that he's better off signing with the RedSox now, then with someone else in 2 years time. When the difference in salaries could possibly be made up in less then ONE YEAR it's hard to see how the ballparks the redsox are talking make sense.

[eg Matsuka makes 3 million in 2007 & 2008 (totalling 6 million) red sox offer is 8 million/5 (making total cost 90 million over 5 years), yet in the difference by end of '08 is only 10 million. If he signs a contract paying $18 million per year in 09, he's already earned as much by end of 09 as with the former, and by the end of 11 he's earned and extra $20 million.

If I'm Matsuka; I'm saying to the red sox if you want me cheap you only get me for 2-3 years. Otherwise you pay 15-18

[nymr83]

well thats certainly true, if you're Boras you are being perfectly reasonable in demanding "market value" for those years after he would be a free agent anyway. If we're talking about a 7 year deal, which considering the whopping size of the fee i'd assume we are, you'd need 5 years of market rate following 2 years of a slight bit more than he'd make staying in Japan... altogether 13-15 a year sounds about right.

I think Boston might have some buyer's remorse, assuming this wasn't all a "keep him away from N.Y. ploy" in the first place, and unlike most baseball buyers they have an easy out.

I think we all agree the posting system needs to change. My idea for a (simple) change would be to allow the Japanese teams to make a player available to negotiate with everyone, but instead of a posting fee they'd get a % of the contract (agreed upon between them and the player/agent before they posted him) for the number of years that he would have still been under control.

[smg58]

Nymr83 wrote: I think we all agree the posting system needs to change. My idea for a (simple) change would be to allow the Japanese teams to make a player available to negotiate with everyone, but instead of a posting fee they'd get a % of the contract (agreed upon between them and the player/agent before they posted him) for the number of years that he would have still been under control.

I like that idea. Even a percentage of the full contract would make more sense that the current situation. Seibu probably wouldn't come away with $51M, but they'd be assured of not getting nothing.

[nymr83]

More importantly, nobody can negotiate in bad faith. Sure Seibu wouldn't get $51 million but I'd have to think that after this fiasco thats not happening again anyway. MLB, if Selig has any balls/common sense whatsoever, will sit down and hammer out a better agreement. Will the Japanese league work something better out or will we end up with a situation where Japanese players can't come here until actual free agency? Would MLB disregard Japanese rules altogether if it came to that? Lots of questions, no answers.

[Guest cleonjones11]

How about no more Japanese players in MLB...

[nymr83]

cleonjones11 wrote: How about no more Japanese players in MLB...

How about no more cleonjones11 posts on the CPF...

[soupcan]

="Nymr83"]How about no more cleonjones11 posts on the CPF...

I'll second that emotion.





Today's New York Times...


December 12, 2006
As Japanese Pitcher Waits, Wheeling Outpaces Dealing
By JACK CURRY


Jae C. Hong/Associated Press
The Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, right, with his agent, Scott Boras, who has until Thursday to strike a deal with the Red Sox.



The Daisuke Matsuzaka saga took another twist on Monday night when two of the Boston Red Sox's chief executives flew from Boston to southern California to meet face to face with the pitcher and Scott Boras, his agent, in an attempt to try and finally reach an agreement on a contract.

In a calculated, aggressive effort, the Red Sox invaded Boras's backyard because they said Boras was not being responsive during their discussions. The Red Sox posted a bid of $51.1 million to win the right to negotiate with Matsuzaka and they have until Thursday at midnight to complete a deal.

"I think it's also fair to say that we're on Scott Boras's doorstep because he hasn't negotiated with us thus far," John Henry, the team's principal owner, said. "We're taking the fight directly to him, a fight to try and have a negotiation here."

General Manager Theo Epstein, who traveled with President Larry Lucchino on Henry's private plane, said they made the cross country trip to present an "improved contract offer of considerable magnitude." Epstein said the Red Sox were increasing their offer, despite the fact that Boras has not made a counter to their initial proposal. The two sides will meet on Tuesday.

"We simply got on the plane and flew to southern California and called Scott when we landed," Epstein said. "We told him we were here to meet and we'd like to meet directly with him and Mr. Matsuzaka as soon as possible."

Although the 30-day deadline for an agreement ends on Thursday, Epstein said it is narrower because the Red Sox do not finalize contracts unless a player has passed a physical. Since the Red Sox want Matsuzaka to be examined in Boston, Epstein suggested that the deadline is actually Wednesday.

"We also have the plane available Wednesday morning," Epstein said. "We hope to be flying back to Boston with Mr. Matsuzaka and Mr. Boras on the plane in order for us to complete a physical and get a deal done before the window lapses."

Before Epstein and Lucchino landed, Boras held a news conference at his office in Newport Beach, Calif. in which he said Matsuzaka is "worth well in excess of $100 million." When Boras mentioned that figure, he was not including the $51.1 million posting fee. Epstein said Boras's amount was "in the right ball park for the commitment of the club," but, of course, he was including the posting fee.

Boras believes that Matsuzaka, 26, who was the Most Valuable Player of the inaugural World Baseball Classic, should be paid as much as $15 million a year. After paying such a lucrative posting fee, the Red Sox believe Matsuzaka cannot expect to be paid like an unrestricted free agent.

The two sides strenuously disagree about the $51.1 million the Red Sox spent to speak with Matsuzaka. Boras does not feel that should factor into what Matsuzaka earns. The agent has called the system flawed and has questioned why the Seibu Lions, Matsuzaka's former team, should potentially benefit so much more than his client.

"The posting fee represents the problem," Boras told reporters. "It's historic, it's new. it's something that's never been done. How do you reflect value in a posting fee in an appropriate contract for a player? In the American system, no player is asked to reduce their salaries for luxury tax purposes."

The Red Sox have remained mostly mum since learning they had posted the highest bid for Matsuzaka last month, but exasperated team officials spoke at length during a conference call that started at 12:50 A.M. (EST). Even in the round-the-clock passion that loyalists have for the Red Sox, the starting time was pretty late.

Still, the Red Sox had some points they wanted to emphasize regarding Matsuzaka and Boras. Epstein called Matsuzaka "a national treasure," the same phrase Boras had used to describe the pitcher a few hours earlier, and gushed about how the best thing for baseball would be if Matsuzaka signs with Boston.

While Epstein acknowledged that it is normally not a shrewd decision to make a second offer when the other party has not responded to the first offer, he said the Red Sox "want to demonstrate to Matsuzaka and fans of Japanese baseball around the world just how important this is to us."

When Esptein was asked if Boras was operating in good faith with Boston, he sidestepped the question by saying Matsuzaka "is certainly operating in good faith." Epstein added, "Again, in the end, it's the player's decision on whether he wants to sign."

Boras, who is baseball's most powerful agent, has often garnered handsome contracts for players by playing offers against each another. He cannot do that in this situation because the Red Sox have exclusive rights to Matsuzaka. What Boras can do is drag out the process and frustrate the Red Sox, perhaps hoping that they will flinch.

If the two sides do not agree on a contract, the Lions would not receive a dime of the $51.1 million and Matsuzaka would have to return to Japan for 2007. Matsuzaka, who had told Boras he wants to pitch in the United States next year, would have to wait at least another year before getting the chance again.

"If there is no deal, then all bets are off," said Lou Melendez, the vice president of international operations for Major League Baseball. "They'd have to post him again next year because he can't be a free agent for two more years."

Boras said Matsuzaka would make the decision about his future on his own.

"One thing is clear, D-Mat will some day be a major league player," Boras said. "We have further negotiating to do. The deadline's not here in five minutes. The parties do understand what the player's value is in the free agent system."

Some Japanese reporters said it would be awkward for Matsuzaka if he had to return to Japan. Matsuzaka has already said good-bye to his country and the financially-strapped Lions were expecting a significant sum after posting him.

"Nobody in Japan is expecting him to come back because the negotiations broke down," said Yasuko Yanagita, a reporter for the Hochi Shimbun. "I don't think this is only for the Japanese culture. But, in Japan, someone asking for 'Money, money, money,' does not leave a good impression."

As both sides have tried to concoct ways to make the deal more favorable for them, there has been speculation that Boras could let the deadline pass so that the Red Sox no longer hold negotiating rights and then attempt to buy out Matsuzaka's free agency.

Once the Lions knew they were not getting $51.1 million, they might be willing to take half of that from Boras. Boras could then market Matsuzaka as a free agent to every team and the pitcher would stand to make much more than he would get from the Red Sox right now. But Melendez said that is not an option.

"The Commissioner's office would not recognize that free agency and the Japanese commissioner's office is in agreement with us," Melendez said.

Now that Epstein and Lucchino have visited Boras's neighborhood, they are pushing to sign a pitcher who will drastically improve their team. The Red Sox have a plane that is leaving southern California on Wednesday. They are hoping Matsuzaka will be on it, hoping their own draining journey was worth it.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Glad it's not my team in this pickle.

[metirish]

Boras has a way with words....

] "In Japan, he's known as the national treasure," Boras told some three dozen media representatives -- nearly all representing Japanese outlets. "Here, he will be known as Fort Knox."

Great name to add pressure to D-Mat.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

If I was a ballplayer I don't think I'd want him as my agent.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I think he's done more than fine by most of his players.

Sure, there are now two towns that hate J.D. Drew for walking away from them, but come on, how bad can it be to be hated by Dodger fans?

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Oh, I'm sure he has.

But I'd be okay getting only $105 million instead of $110 million and having an agent who cares more about what I want than about chasing the last dollar. (If in fact that's how Boras operates. That's the conventional wisdom on him but we can't be sure it's accurate.)

[Centerfield]

Yancy, you're not seeing the big picture. $105 million is only like $60 million or so after taxes.

[metsmarathon]

but then, if that were the case, you wouldn't have signed him to be your agent.

if you were all about the dollar, then you would.

[metirish]

metsmarathon wrote: but then, if that were the case, you wouldn't have signed him to be your agent. if you were all about the dollar, then you would.

Zito...

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

metsmarathon wrote: but then, if that were the case, you wouldn't have signed him to be your agent. if you were all about the dollar, then you would.

That's what I originally said. If I were a ballplayer, I wouldn't choose him to be my agent.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I don't htink wanting your agent to bring home every dollar you're entitled to necessarily makes you "all about the dollar."

Maybe it's five million more for the Joe Shlabotnik Foundation.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

Could be.

But I wonder how true his rep is.

Let's say I'm his client, and the Astros are offering me $120 million and the Mets are offering me $115 million. And I say to Boras, "You know, Scott, I grew up as a Mets fan and I'd love to live in New York again after six years in Milwaukee. Plus, I hate Texas."

The press would have us believe that I'd have no choice in the matter. That Boras always makes his client take the highest offer. I have my doubts about how true that is. Ultimately, isn't it the player that's calling the shots?

In the case above, if Boras had used Houston to leverage the Mets up from $90 million to $115 million, then he did a good job for me. He gets less of a commission if I choose the Mets, but he's still getting an awfully big payday.

[Frayed Knot]

The parties are en route to Boston with a 6-year deal in hand

Looks like - for the most part - that the BoSox hold-the-ground strategy won out over Boras's bluster.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

They'll pay him $52 million for the six years.

With the posting fee, it ends up costing the $103 million over six, or about $17.2 million per year.

[Guest Edgy DC]

Which shouldn't be his concern in a fair world.

The great Daisuke Matsuzaka ends up with Gil Meche money.

[Farmer Ted]

I had a nice talk with a friend today who is a legal scholar in sports law. He said that the posting thing isn't unusual and is very common in European soccer. He said that sort of practice is probably here for quite a while. It's just that American sports have never really dealt with this process of negotiating with a player who has a binding contract with another team.

One thing he thought was strange was how player "sales" don't occur anymore. At least not since Bowie Kuhn blocked Charlie Finely from doing it in '76. Kuhn, according to my friend, had a hard-on for Finley after Finley tried to force Mike Andrews onto the DL after he committed two errors against our beloved Mets in the '73 WS. No team has tried it since thinking that this was new precedent. According to him, the process still seems to be legal. His argument is the Pirates of the 90s. Why not be able to sell a Sid Breem and and a Van Slyke in order shed salary to be able to pay a bigger contract to keep Bonds and Bonilla? As long as you're not shedding salary and showing progress in your overall team salary level, the commissioner should not be able to block a team from doing so. Perhaps Montreal teams could have sold off decent talent in order to keep Pedro, Vlad, etc., or the Marlins sell off a few players without having to go through a complete fire sale gutting.

[Guest Johnny Dickshot]

John Thorn had an interesting take on the whole thing. He basically argues that MLB and NPB are in cahoots on the benefits of the posting system (I'd have guessed NPB was, and MLB wasn't, necessarily) and is sympathetic to Boras as a Marvin Miller of the disenfranchised talent (which I agree).

Anyway, stay with it:

]The Matsuzaka Dilemma Written by John Thorn Tuesday, 12 December 2006 This whole swirl may be over by the time you read this, but the meaning is the same, no matter how it comes out, and so is the moral. I�m talking about the sequence in which the Boston Red Sox were revealed to have outbid other baseball clubs for the thirty-day negotiating rights to �posted� Seibu Lion pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, who wishes to pitch in the United States but is not, under Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) regulations, eligible for free agency until 2008. This Thursday night at midnight, when December 14 becomes December 15, is the witching hour. As I write, Boston Red Sox executives have just landed the owner�s plane on the West Coast to plant themselves on agent Scott Boras�s doorstep. His Japanese client is mum on the seeming breakdown in negotiations, but as he has not fired his representative one may deduce that he is in on the game. It is a game designed by Major League Baseball (MLB) and the NPB, but as they seem only dimly to have understood their own rules, D-Mat and his designated hitter have made their own�or rather, as we shall see, correctly fathomed the implicit rule structure of the posting system. Bottom line: no matter how this shakes out, while D-Mat is not exactly the reincarnation of Curt Flood, Scott Boras has taken the mantle of Marvin Miller, and is my new hero. Yesterday I had lunch at the local Chinese restaurant where, despite my better judgment, I ate my customary sacramental portion of the stale fortune cookie and read its message. �It is better to have a hen tomorrow than an egg today� was the word from on high. Wait, I thought; this reverses the more commonly expressed wisdom that not only is an egg today better than a hen tomorrow, but also its avian corrolary about birds in hand and those in the bush. I wondered: might Boras have received the same, seemingly counterintuitive message? Let�s back up for a moment and see how we got here. In the system by which a player is to be posted, both the team and player must agree on the posting. The team then notifies the NPB Commissioner�s Office that the player will be posted, which then notifies MLB, which notifies all of its teams. The MLB teams then have four days to submit a closed bid for the right to negotiate a contract with the player. If the high bid is accepted by the NPB team holding the player�s rights, the winning MLB team has thirty days to reach an agreement with the player. If the bid is rejected, the player is not �posted.� If the player signs a contract with the MLB team by the end of the signing period, then the NPB team receives the bid money. If the player does not sign a contract with the MLB team by the end of the signing period, the player is returned to the NPB team and the NPB team receives nothing. Whoever designed this may have had in mind that classic scenario of game theory called the �Prisoner�s Dilemma.� It is a mathematical and psychological game illustrating how rational actions by individuals may not always lead to positive outcomes for either the individuals or the group. The Prisoner�s Dilemma is described neatly in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy: �Tanya and Cinque have been arrested for robbing the Hibernia Savings Bank and placed in separate isolation cells. Both care much more about their personal freedom than about the welfare of their accomplice. A clever prosecutor makes the following offer to each. �You may choose to confess or remain silent. If you confess and your accomplice remains silent I will drop all charges against you and use your testimony to ensure that your accomplice does serious time. Likewise, if your accomplice confesses while you remain silent, they will go free while you do the time. If you both confess I get two convictions, but I�ll see to it that you both get early parole. If you both remain silent, I�ll have to settle for token sentences on firearms possession charges. If you wish to confess, you must leave a note with the jailer before my return tomorrow morning.� �The �dilemma� faced by the prisoners here is that, whatever the other does, each is better off confessing than remaining silent. But the outcome obtained when both confess is worse for each than the outcome they would have obtained had both remained silent. A common view is that the puzzle illustrates a conflict between individual and group rationality. A group whose members pursue rational self-interest may all end up worse off than a group whose members act contrary to rational self-interest. More generally, if the payoffs are not assumed to represent self-interest, a group whose members rationally pursue any goals may all meet less success than if they had not rationally pursued their goals individually. Puzzles with this structure were devised and discussed by Merrill Flood and Melvin Dresher in 1950, as part of the Rand Corporation�s investigations into game theory (which Rand pursued because of possible applications to global nuclear strategy).� So, the underlying scheme of Prisoner�s Dilemma is to have the two prisoners collaborate wittingly or unwittingly against their own interest, with the outcome weighted to benefit the sate as represented by the police and prosecutor. The dilemma resides in the fact that each prisoner has a choice between only two options, but cannot make a good decision without knowing what the other one will do. I suggest that the posting system was created along these lines to benefit the �state��each league and each team involved. Think of MLB and Boston as the police and prosecutor in the above scenario, knowing that the salutary actions of Prisoner A (NPB and Seibu) and Prisoner B (Matsuzaka and Boras) are necessary to prevent the mutually assured destruction (M.A.D.) of MLB. That was the prospect some owners envisioned in 1973-74, at the dawn of free agency: that in an auction scenario, dollars would pursue scarce/unique assets in an irrationally exuberant way that would effectively transfer control of the game into the players� hands. Marvin Miller cleverly assuaged the owners� fears while assuring high prices for his players� union by restricting free agency to those with six years� service in the major leagues; had he opted for universal free agency, as he might have, the flood of talent onto the market each year would have depressed salaries. The design problem in the Prisoner�s Dilemma game above is that Prisoner Seibu has its deal in hand and is (ostensibly) denied the option of contributing some of its $51.1 million posting fee from Boston toward Prisoner Matsuzaka�s new contract. Indeed, without flexibility the fortunes of Seibu/NPB are more closely tied to the Police/Prosecutor than to Matsuzaka despite the pitcher�s total control over Seibu�s posting windfall. Boston, which stands ready to pay the sum and call it a bargain, instead feels aggrieved because its $51.1 million in expense is counted as nothing by Boras, who is looking to obtain $100 million for a six-year contract, pretty much in line with what his client would fetch in an unrestricted market. Boston had intended to pay out $100 million, all right, but had figured that Boras would give the club credit for half of that for �liberating� his client. No such luck, nor should there have been. The posting system entices Boston (and other bidding clubs) with the lure of paying for a free agent in a tangential way that would not increase its exposure to luxury tax. The Red Sox are further compensated by considering the payment to Seibu as an inexpensive licensing or entry fee to market their brand vigorously in Japan. Additionally, the exclusivity that came with their winning bid permitted them not only to pursue Matsuzaka, but also to defend against the Yankees landing him. With its $51.1 million sugarplum, Seibu thought it was being rewarded for having nurtured Matsuzaka�s talent to the point that he was one of the top five pitchers in the world, and for graciously letting him go to America two years before NPB regulations would otherwise allow. In fact Seibu was also being pulled out of a very considerable financial hole, as the posting fee hits up on their bottom line as pure net income ... plus they gain at least $12 million in the amount they would otherwise have had to pay Matsuzaka for 2007 and 2008, the last years of his contract with the Lions. MLB/Boston is in effect attempting to coerce a �confession� from Prisoner Matsuzaka because he risks embarrassment by returning to pitch for Seibu after 36,000 fans bade him farewell at the Lions� Stadium, and because Seibu doesn�t want him back at the forfeiture of $63 million it is already counting on. What did MLB and the 29 teams not in the running for D-Mat�s services gain by the posting system? A presumptive lid on D-Mat�s demands and their escalating effect on pitcher salaries, already heightened by the ineffectual Adam Eaton and the awful Justin Marquis, each of whom received multiyear contracts at about $8 million per. With Matsuzaka wearing carmine hose, MLB will gain a new hero to promote its brand in Japan as well as the USA, just as Ichiro proved a marketing windfall. In fact this posting system is a nostalgic throwback, recreating for owners a glimpse of the paradise they enjoyed prior to free agency, when they owned the market and could say �take it or leave it� to the players. While the posting system may have been born of a genuine wish to protect Japanese baseball and avoid the appearance of American cultural imperialism, it has played out as an exercise in �Who will rule.� As Boras has evidently surmised, even though MLB and NPB thought they had boxed in Prisoner Matsuzaka, it turned out that he and his client were not locked in behind iron bars but instead, like Br�er Rabbit, had been thrown into a briar patch from which they could easily escape. Boras has recognized that while the game is structured like Prisoner�s Dilemma, counting upon Seibu and his client to act independently in their perceived self-interest to the benefit of Organized Baseball, there is in fact only one prisoner, and without his yielding, there is no palatable outcome. If MLB and NPB had a game theory for how this would play itself out, it was the wrong one ... styled as Prisoner�s Dilemma but quickly revealing itself to be the �Dollar Auction,� another, even more vicious game, in which each of two contestants seeks to overpay for an asset in order to avoid being the second-place bidder whose money will have been utterly wasted. In the Dollar Auction someone offers to sell a dollar bill to the highest bidder. The highest bidder will get the dollar, but the second-highest must also pay what he bid yet get nothing in return. Think here of �throwing good money after bad,� of �saving face,� of �having too much invested to cut and run,� of �staying the course.� If you can buy a dollar for a dime, this looks like a good deal. Even as the bidding rises in ten-cent increments to the 50-cent level, it still seems a bargain. At the 70-cent level, one may expect that all but two bidders will have fallen off the chase. When the dollar-mark is reached, the underbidder, rather than accepting defeat, will tend to bid ten cents more so as not to lose 90 cents. �People escalate their commitment both to justify their earlier bids and to prevent the financial and ego loss of coming in second,� Max H. Bazerman wrote in Psychology Today twenty years ago. �No specific bid is clearly wrong, since it is rational to bid �just another 10 cents,� if the other party is about to quit bidding. But when both parties think this way, an escalatory spiral emerges that is very reminiscent of the Vietnam War and other international and industrial failures in which both competitors get trapped by their previous commitments.� At first blush the winner in the Matsuzaka Dilemma appeared to be Boston; if the Mets were second, at $13 million less, they felt no ill consequence of their bid. Had the posting system had been a true Dollar Auction, with succesive rounds of bidding, rather than a veiled Prisoner�s Dilemma with closed bids, the price for D-Mat might have gone much higher, as the underbidder would have been highly motivated to stay in the game. But now Boston�s inadvertent partner has been revealed not to be MLB but Seibu, which unlike Boston�which will retain the defensive benefit of its bid�will lose everything, as if it had been the underbidder in a Dollar Auction. And Br�er Boras and D-Mat, if they do not prevail this year, can play again only with more bargaining clout.

[Guest Yancy Street Gang]

It seems now, with hindsight, that Matsuzaka's best option would have been to stay in Japan for the next two years and then become a free agent after 2008, with the ability to negotiate with 30 MLB clubs.

Using the analogy from the above article, he ate the egg instead of letting it grow into a hen.

If the Red Sox had won the bid with a "mere" $10 million, Matsuzaka would probably have been able to leverage a higher salary from Boston. But he was the victim of his own desirability.

Also, if he was less concerned about "face" and its cultural ramifications, he could also have said, "The Red Sox aren't paying me what I feel I deserve. I'll go back the the Seibu Lions and pitch for another two years." That would certainly have been to his financial advantage as well.

I don't blame the Red Sox for doing what they did. If they paid Matsuzaka $17 million per year in salary, he'd end up costing them about $23 million per, which I can understand them not wanting to do.

The next Japanese player will probably think twice about playing the posting game, unless the rules change or unless he's a lesser player who can expect a lower bid from the MLB team. If it was me, I'd wait until full free agency. Matsuzaka will be pitching for at least four of the six years at a discount that was forced by the $51 million bid. And maybe all six years are at a discount; I don't know what he would have made from the Lions.

[Guest cleonjones11]

Screw Dice-K ITS ZITO TIME!!!!

[smg58]

The Red Sox come out winners at that price. Assuming Matsuzaka is as good as billed, of course.

Two factors would have kept the price that low. One is how badly did Matsuzaka want to play in the US right now. The other is the risk factor involved with staying another year in Japan. If he's not as dominant next year, his market value diminishes. And if he gets hurt, his market value vanishes entirely. So it would make sense to concede some salary as an insurance policy. Still, I thought $70M over six years would have been the minimum amount to agree on given the risk of staying put, so I'm guessing Matsuzaka told Boras to get as much as he could but ultimately agree.

[Guest Edgy DC]

I'm not so sure anybody wins, though the Tigers are sitting pretty well right now. The Sox, in order to make their investment worthwhile, had to lock hiim up for a longer period than most folks want to risk on pitchers --- any pitchers.

Six years at $17.2 million per annum is comparable to Mike Hampton money. That didn't really work out.

[Vic Sage]

Mike Hampton didn't open up the Japanese TV market for Colorado. And signing Mike Hampton didn't keep him out of the clutches of the Rockies' main competitor (because they don't have one).

Signing pitchers to long term deals is always risky. That being said, i think the BoSox did this just right.

[nymr83]

For all his accomplishments in Japan (some of which, like 200 pitches on 3 days rest in a high school game might raise concerns) he is still a guy with 0 major league innings under his belt, for that reason alone paying him that much money isn't a decision i'd normally expect to see made but oh well, its not my team's money.

As far as the "prisoner's dilemma" goes, I don't really like the analogy here. Also, the article gets part of it WRONG:

]The dilemma resides in the fact that each prisoner has a choice between only two options, but cannot make a good decision without knowing what the other one will do.

Even knowing "what the other one will do" does not solve the dilemma. here's an example:
-Prisoner A and Prisoner B rob a bank with illegal guns.
-robbing a bank carries a 10 year sentence
-illegal possession of a gun carries a 3 year sentence

-the prosecutor tells them both that if they both confess he will ask that the sentences for the two crimes be served concurrently (combined jail time: 20 years) if one confesses, he will get probation only and the other will serve the two terms consecutively (combined jail time: 13 years) if neither confesses he will nail them with the gun crimes but doesnt have the evidence to convict on the robbery (combined jail time: 6 years)

-it is clearly in their combined best interest to both not confess

-let's say the prosecutor allows them to talk before making their decisions, and they agree with each other to remain silent

-after that discussion here are prisoner A's options:
1. if he believes B will confess, he had best confess himself to serve 10 years instead of 13.
2. if he believes B will not confess, he should still confess himself to serve nothing instead of 3 years.

-the same is true for B, and so they will both (if acting rationally) confess despit their assurances to the contrary to each other.

This works in a business context as well, most notably with cartels or other horizontal agreements on price or output levels- no matter what you expect the others to do it is always best for you to "cheat" on the agreement