This offseason has been crazy with large deals for players, and it included yesterday as the Texas Rangers won the bidding rights to negotiate with Yu Darvish. The Rangers submitted a bid of 51.7 million, the highest bid ever submitted (the second largest was 51.2 million for Daisuke that the Red Sox posted).
To put this in perspective, this isn’t 51.7 million for a player, rather just the money to negotiate a deal for the pitcher. CJ Wilson’s deal was about 25 million more, but that was for 6 years, this is just to negotiate.
That being said, Darvish is in an incredible player. His ERA is consistently below 2, and he constantly has over 200 innings pitched. Even though Japan’s hitters are weaker than the MLB’s, the stadiums are more hitter friendly. The Rangers statement said that Darvish is a once in a lifetime player, and now we will see if he can stay that way with the Texas Rangers.
Personally, I’m just relieved that a team in the American League won the rights, not in the National League East, which is already overloaded with strong pitchers not wearing a Mets uniform.
