2) Darvish sees $0,000,000 of the posting fee. He sees ~$10 million a year. The Rangers negotiated a salary with him after they submitted the posting fee. Plus the posting fee is paid upfront so the Rangers only pay Darvish $10 million a year…again. (See point 1- I understand that this is not the total investment).

3) As Dave Cameron pointed out today over at FanGraphs (by the way, djpostl, he agrees with how you describe it), that Darvish will only have to be about as good as Jake Peavy to earn the total value (in terms of $/WAR). Scouts (i.e. Keith Law) have said he could be a true 1 or at the least a 2 – if this is true than he will be considered a good investment.

The bottom line is we can throw all sorts of numbers and values out there, but until we see how he pitches throughout the contract only then will we be able to see if it was a good move. The Rangers seemed to think so. Why should we pretend that we are smarter?

They paid 11 mil and they have him for 6 years. That means his true cost is 18 per year.

You want to spin some bullshit go into politics or work on wall street.

The big reason why Yu got the Rangers to spend 111 mil on him was because he is both talented AND young. Teams see that combo in a starter (let alone one who has shined on the big stage like Hamels did in 2008) and they open their wallets big time.

He just got $15m in ARBITRATION.

Barring injury or a total crash n burn season, He will get at least $20m/year.

And that’s part of the point that these commenters are making. The value of this pitching translating into MLB WAR or ERA + is questionable so far, that’s the claim. Agreed that there is no representational data presented to support that claim other than ERA.

But regardless of that, the point is that even against the standard of great pitching stats in Japan, Darvish’s record there is significantly better than the others who’ve made the leap to MLB.

But as far as whether the average value of pitchers from Japan has or has not exceeded MLB or another nationalities average, I don’t have data on that. My claim was merely that commenters are making that statement.

Despite that, I count two superstar pitchers among them(Nomo and Sasaki) and numerous very good to borderline stars. By comparison, look at how many americans come and go on rosters in any given period of time, I guarantee you that it produces far fewer solid regulars against the total number of players, much less superstars than you see out of the Japan leagues.

A large part of this is of course that US teams get to cherry pick the Japanese players they want, taking only the cream of the crop. But at the same time I have to wonder how many more would rise if there was a level of competition above the league that they play in now that they could move to as soon as their skills merited it.

As for Yu, he’s got a good shot not just because of his skillset, but becacuse he’s 25. He’s going to be one of the youngest guys to ever get a shot at having a career here, starting maybe one or two years after the typical star rookie would. I’m looking forward to seeing if he’s up to it, it would be nice to see someone eclipse Nomo’s stature in the US, maybe even throw a couple no-no’s.

This deal has risk. A lot of commenters have pointed out that Darvish has never thrown in the majors, and the success rate of Japanese baseball bred starting pitching in MLB isn’t great.

But financially, the Rangers are only on the hook going forward for $10M per year. Which means that should they want to move him 3 years from now, it won’t be impossible.

And if he is the exception and starts pitching very well anytime soon, the total expenditure will have been worth it.

But the main thing is that the Rangers projected him as potentially the top starter they needed to get over the World Series hump. And they got their man.

Now we play the games. Have to like the way the rivalry between LAA and TEX is shaping up. I’m looking forward to seeing Pujols against Darvish, and Hamilton against CJ Wilson in September.

It’s certainly gonna beat my steady diet of the A’s trotting out Pitcher X from Sacramento to face Seattle’s number 8 hitter.

Expanding fan base = front runners who were Astro fans 5 years ago