Masahiro Tanaka will be pitching in the MLB next season.  It has been the biggest roller coaster ride of the off season as every day reports would come from Japan saying that he was going to be posted and that he was not going to be posted.  MLB negotiated a new deal with the Japan Baseball League that had many people thinking that Rakuten would just keep control of Tanaka at least for one more year and maybe the full two before he had enough service time to become a free agent on his own.  Under the new system, every MLB team had an opportunity to submit a bid just for the rights to negotiate with the player.  The team would get the money from the highest bid.  The player could then only negotiate with that one team and had a month to either sign or be returned to his team.  If he failed to sign, the MLB team would get the posting fee returned.

Under that plan, the Boston Red Sox paid $51.11 million dollars to the Seibu Lions just for the rights to negotiate with Daisuke (Dice-K) Matsuzaka.  Dice-K then signed a 6 year contract with the Red Sox for $52M.  So it cost the Red Sox a total of $103M to sign Matsuzaka with the player getting half and the team getting half.  That deal did not work out too well for Boston.  Dice-K was plagued with arm problems that led to him spending a lot of time on the DL and being ineffective when he was on the mound.  He did help Boston win the 2007 World Series and had a stellar 2008 season but the last four years of his time in Boston was rocky to say the least.  The other big name pitcher to come over to the MLB recently was Yu Darvish.  The Texas Rangers won the bidding on his posting with a bid of $51.7M to the Nippon-Ham Fighters…just a little over half a million more than Dice-K’s posting.  Texas then signed Darvish to a 6 year/$60M contract with just 15 minutes to go before the one month deadline expired.  So it was a better deal for the player and about the same for the team.  While the Rangers have not won a World Series with Yu Darvish, they have received two very good years from him.  It will be interesting to see if he has the same troubles arise in year 3 that Dice-K did.

Easy to see that the MLB teams were not exactly thrilled with this process.  They did not like having to pay $50M+ just for the rights to sign a player but the Japanese teams LOVED it.  Rakuten was eagerly awaiting their probably at least $52M posting fee judging on the Dice-K and Darvish bids to post Masahiro Tanaka.  While some scouts say that he is not as good as Darvish, Masahiro Tanaka has put up unbelievable numbers in Japan.  In 2013, he started 27 games and went 24 – 0 with an ERA of 1.27.  He pitched 212 innings which means his arm is capable of a full season in the MLB.  He had 8 complete games, only gave up 168 hits and 32 walks for a WHIP of .94 and a K/BB ratio of over 5:1.  Those numbers combined with him only being 25 years old has half the teams in MLB wanting to be able to win his services.

Before Masahiro Tanaka could be posted however, MLB negotiated a new deal with the JBL.  Under the new deal, there is a max posting bid of $20M and however many teams tie with that max bid, or whatever the highest bid ends up being,  can negotiate with the player.  This takes anywhere from $30M – $35M away from the Japanese team, in this instance Rakuten but it easily makes the player that much more.  If the Red Sox and Rangers spent a combined $100 – 110M on Dice-K and Darvish under the old system, that would mean that Tanaka could realistically get $80 – $90M or more since the posting fee is $20M instead of $50M+.  Tanaka was anxious to get posted so he could negotiate what could end up topping a $100M deal if he signs for longer than 6 years.  Rakuten was less than eager to post him.  Was $20M worth losing their stud pitcher?  Would it be better to just keep him and get another year out of him and then post him next season?  After several weeks of going back and forth on their decision, Rakuten has decided to not risk injury and to post Masahiro Tanaka to the MLB.  They’ll take their $20M because it is better than nothing but it is a tough pill to swallow considering what might have been.

It will be interesting to see how many teams make the max bid of $20M to have negotiating rights with Masahiro Tanaka.  Only the team that actually signs him will have to pay Rakuten the $20M posting fee.  Therefore, I don’t know why every single team wouldn’t bid the max for the chance to talk to him.  According to Ken Rosenthal, Jon Heyman and other national baseball beat writers, the Cubs, Yankees, Diamondbacks, Dodgers and Rangers appear to the teams that have the most interest in legitimately attempting to sign Tanaka.  The Rangers have spent A LOT of money already this offseason by acquiring Prince Fielder and Shin-Soo Choo.  The Yankees have spent a bundle on Brian McCann, Jacoby Ellsbury, Carlos Beltran and others.  They may not have the room under the $189M soft salary cap that they are trying to adhere to in order to avoid hefty taxes by MLB.  The Dodgers still have to extend Clayton Kershaw and probably don’t have room on their current roster for Tanaka.  That would leave the Cubs and the Diamondbacks as the leading candidates…unless the Yankees say to hell with the $189M limit.  Buckle your seat belts, it’s going to be a bumpy but interesting road the next month while teams jockey for positioning in the Masahiro Tanaka sweepstakes.