beautiful_mess38
Nov 15, 2006, 05:01 AM
Baseball's mad new world
By Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports
November 14, 2006
NAPLES, Fla. – To neatly summarize baseball's new era: The Boston Red Sox are willing to pay $51.1 million merely for the right to negotiate with Scott Boras.
Such talks have, in the past, made fools of rich men, turned dark hair gray and sent systolic and diastolic pressures to unhealthy levels. And yet here are the Red Sox, coveting Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka enough that they might just be breaking a commandment, and steeling for discussions that, if successful, will end with them shelling out another $12.5 million or so a year to actually get the right-hander in uniform.
If Boston does work out a contract with Matsuzaka over the next 30 days – Boras will push for three years to get Matsuzaka back on the free-agent market before he turns 30, and the Red Sox will pull for four or five years to get the full value of the posting fee they pay the Seibu Lions – he becomes the new Alex Rodriguez, around a $25 million-a-year man.
Only he'll play in one-fifth the games.
By Jeff Passan, Yahoo! Sports
November 14, 2006
NAPLES, Fla. – To neatly summarize baseball's new era: The Boston Red Sox are willing to pay $51.1 million merely for the right to negotiate with Scott Boras.
Such talks have, in the past, made fools of rich men, turned dark hair gray and sent systolic and diastolic pressures to unhealthy levels. And yet here are the Red Sox, coveting Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka enough that they might just be breaking a commandment, and steeling for discussions that, if successful, will end with them shelling out another $12.5 million or so a year to actually get the right-hander in uniform.
If Boston does work out a contract with Matsuzaka over the next 30 days – Boras will push for three years to get Matsuzaka back on the free-agent market before he turns 30, and the Red Sox will pull for four or five years to get the full value of the posting fee they pay the Seibu Lions – he becomes the new Alex Rodriguez, around a $25 million-a-year man.
Only he'll play in one-fifth the games.