That's It?

If published reports are true, the Red Sox and Scott Boras, agent for Daisuke "Skyline" Matsuzaka, are only $3 million in yearly salary apart. Boston wants to pay $8 million a year, while Boras countered with $11 million a year.

It seems that neither side has a problem with a six-year contract. I was under the impression that contract length was the sticking point. Boston would want a long deal (5+ years) to spread out the cost of Skyline's posting fee. Boras would counter with a short deal (3 or 4 years) so the Japanese ace could go back on the market at the tail end of his prime.

If six years isn't the issue for Boras, then I'll be shocked if the parties can't come to an agreement. Boras's asking price plus the pro-rated posting fee of $8.52 million per year ($51.11 million / 6 years) yields an average annual value of $19.52 million. In a world where Gil Meche is worth $11 million a year for five years, Skyline's easily worth $19.52 million over six.

Get ready for tomorrow's press conference announcing the signing.

Pacific League -0.5 MLB

The latest news on Daisuke ("Skyline") Matsuzaka? Report: BoSox's talks with Matsuzaka nearly dead. The reality? It's more like even money that he'll be taking a physical on Wednesday and signed by the Thursday deadline.

In a recent column, Joe Sheehan at Baseball Prospectus elegantly explained how the Boston Red Sox "queered the process" of the posting system between MLB and the Japanese Pacific League. If you're not a BP subscriber (though you should be), here's a quick recap:

1) Boston overbid for the exclusive right to negotiate with Matsuzaka; their bid of $51.11 million was almost 30% higher than the second-place Mets' bid.

2) The Red Sox have refused to offer a market value contract for a starting pitcher of Skyline's ability. If 33-year-old Jason Schmidt is getting $15.66 million a year, the in-his-prime Matsuzaka should get $20 million/year.

3) Neither the Seibu Lions, Matsuzaka's team in Japan, nor Skyline himself, have any leverage in these negotiations. If the Red Sox and Scott Boras fail to agree on a contract, Seibu gets zero dollars instead of $51.11 million. Skyline would then have to go back and play in Japan, where his salary is only $3 million. He wouldn't become eligible for true free agency until after 2008.

4) Seibu has the incentive to return some of the posting fee to the Red Sox so the American team can better afford to add Matsuzaka to their rotation. If Boston gets a $10 million mail in rebate on Skyline and are able to sign him to a five year deal, that would lower the average annual value of the contract by $2 million. But MLB nixed that idea as against the spirit of the process.

5) Even if a side deal goes down, the Red Sox have broken the posting system. As Sheehan wrote, "For the teams that the Sox outbid in the blind process, nausea rules the day. It may turn out that the Lions receive less from the Red Sox than what the next-highest bids would have brought in straight up, which renders the process a farce. "

Just because next year's arrangement between MLB and the Pacific League will be different than the current posting system, one should not take the ESPN article at face value when it says Matsuzaka's on his way back to Japan. The article quotes a "source familiar with the negotiations," but also says that attempts to reach Boras for comment were unsucessful. That means our article's source is likely affiliated with the Red Sox, the other party to the talks. And what better way to exert Boston's leverage than through anonymously sourced news articles?

Two more reasons the Red Sox will have Matsuzaka in their 2007 rotation: First, they need him - they can't count on Schilling and Wakefield for 350+ innings. Second, MLB, which has notably intervened in the Astros' bid to re-sign Andy Pettitte, doesn't want to insult the Japanese by screwing over one of its baseball teams in the process of bringing their best player over to America. My guess is that Skyline signs with Boston for about $13 million per year.

***

The system's been broken before. In 1994, Hideo Nomo "retired" from the Pacific League so he could sign with the Dodgers. Three years later, a 21-year-old Alfonso Soriano pulled the same stunt. But as rich as Soriano became this November, the real catch of the 1997 offseason was one Hideki Irabu. To get a leg up on MLB, the San Diego Padres signed a working agreement with the Chiba Lotte Marines, Irabu's Pacific League team, essentially turning the Marines into a minor league affiliate.

That prompted Major League Baseball and the Pacific League to conjure up the posting system. Now that the Red Sox have exposed the fatal flaw, here are two possibilities for the next agreement between MLB and the Pacific League.

1) Allow subsequent bidders to step in after the winning team's 30-day exclusive window has expired. This would create pressure on the winning team to sign the Japanese player because someone else could get him. There's a chance that the second- or third-place bidders could also lowball the player in question, following in the footsteps of the auction's winner. But that's unlikely; because those teams' initial bids were lower, they'd have less trouble playing the average annual salary that the player's agent is seeking. And there's something to be said for getting the player your opponents also wanted.

2) MLB could pay the Pacific League a yearly fee in lieu of the bidding process in exchange for shortening the time before Pacific League players become free agents. Pacific League players would love to gain earlier access to the free market. Right now they must wait ten years after first signing. [Edit: It's nine years, as reported by the Japan Times. But the same article tells us that, unlike in MLB, Pacific League players don't accumulate service time while injured(!)] This agreement could reduce that time to seven or eight years, more in line with American leagues. MLB benefits on the field by having more of the world's best players in the world's best baseball league. They also benefit in the bank with some basic economics - by increasing the supply of players, the prices on those players will fall. Pacific League teams would receive a regular income stream from MLB, perhaps $40 million a year split among all teams in the league. This would allow the entire league, rather than individual teams, to benefit from Japanese stars migrating to America. It would also provide the Pacific League teams with regular income instead of the random postings we've seen over the last seven years.

However the parties agree, the Red Sox will be remembered as having paid the largest-ever posting fee under the old posting system.

Simmons: Here's your answer!

If you haven't read the Sports Guy's latest mailbag, you missed him asking his readers for a nickname for new Boston starter Daisuke Matsuzaka.

Bill, How about Daisuke "Skyline" Matsuzaka. Here's what it has going for it:

1) It will remind everyone in New York, home of a world-famous skyline, that neither the Mets nor the Yankees, with all their cash, bid enough to get Matsuzaka.

2) It rolls off the tounge. Say it: Daisuke "Skyline" Matsuzaka.

3) Doesn't "Skyline" sound like an unbelievably expensive nickname that reflects the sky-high expectations Boston's gonna have for him?

4) Some geek made an excellent comparison of the pitcher to a car of the very same name.

Daisuke Matsuzaka is a Nissan Skyline GT-R

Everyone seems blown away by the fact that the Red Sox just bid $51 million for the exclusive right to negotiate a contract with Japanese superstar pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka. Setting aside the question of how good he's going to be, let me explain why the new Boston hurler is merely a metaphor for the fine ride to the left, the 2008 Nissan Skyline GT-R.

It's only been available in Japan.

We Americans have trouble looking past our borders (unless we're at war or trying to build a fence to keep out Mexicans). Imagine if Ferraris weren't sold in the U.S. They might have the same cachet and name recognition, but I doubt it. The Skyline GT-R has only been sold as a right-hand drive model, so it's never made its way over here. Matsuzaka has pitched his entire career in the Japanese Pacific League, that country's equivalent of our MLB. (He never pitched in the minor leagues.) So you hadn't heard of Matsuzaka before ESPN started hyping him. That doesn't mean he didn't exist.

The statistics are undeniable.

Over the last four years, Matsuzaka's put up numbers in the Pacific League that compare to the 2003-2006 version of Roger Clemens, the 2004 NL Cy Young winner and 2005 ERA champ (1.87!). The Skyline GT-R will have a 450-horsepower twin-turbo V6 driving the rear wheels and a suspension tuned by Lotus. That's about 100 more horses than the BMW 650i.

It's been around a really long time.

Even though it's never been brought to American shores, the Skyline GT-R has actually been around since 1969. That's not as old as the Corvette, which debuted in 1953, but it's only five years younger than the Mustang, a car Ford just redesigned with retro styling cues. Matsuzaka has been a national hero in Japan since 1998, when he threw 250 pitches to notch the win in a quarterfinal game of the Japanese high school baseball tournament (think March Madness, now mulitply national interest by 17). In the semi, Matsuzaka played the outfield but got a save. In the final, he threw a freakin' no-hitter. The next year, he won the rookie of the year as a 19-year-old in the Japanese major leagues. Dwight Gooden was 20 when he won the NL award in 1985.

It opens up an entirely new market.

Sure, the Red Sox need a quality starter after their 2006 rotation of Schilling, Beckett, Clement, Wakefield and Wells didn't work out. Of course, Boston's ultrahigh bid was designed to fend off the Yankees. But more than anything else, this deal is about generating Japanese interest in the Red Sox. Of course there are stadium advertisements in the Bronx and Seattle, where Hideki Matsui and Ichiro! play, respectively. But have you noticed the Japanese ads in Toronto? The Yankees come through less than 20 times a year, but some company's paid to get its name in Skydome (or whatever they're calling it these days) just so it can be televised on the Yankee games broadcast back in Japan. Boston wants a piece of that, no doubt.

The same goes for the Skyline GT-R. Nissan sees an opportunity to get in on the luxury sport coupe market dominated by the likes of BMW, Mercedes, Jaguar and Porsche. And note that the Skyline will be sold as a Nissan not an Infiniti (Nissan's upscale brand), as Nissan looks for a "halo car" to bring deeper pockets into its showrooms.

It's expensive, but worth it.

The MSRP on a z06 Corvette (the exclusive, high-powered version) is $70,000. Nissan plans to price the Skyline GT-R at $65,000. For those with the cash, the 2008 model will outperform the Z06 and a Porsche 911 Turbo while lending the exclusivity that an entirely new car can bring.

When the Sox sign Matsuzaka to the five-year, $75 million contract people expect Scott Boras to negotiate, the pitcher's total cost including the bid will be the same $25 million/year that everyone's favorite punching bag Alex Rodriguez makes with the Yankees. There's a reason A-Rod earned such a large contract: He was a Gold Glove-quality shortstop with unprecedented hitting skills (for the position) coming into his prime. Despite complaints about Rodriguez's lack of "clutchness," the numbers he's put up each year justify his high salary. Middle infielders - even if the Yankees play him at 3B - who hit 35+ home runs every year are not widely available. The Red Sox see Matsuzaka the same way. He's a Cy-Young quality pitcher just entering his prime, with the added bonus of a marketing gold mine to come.

Do I wish the Mets, who finished second with a bid of $39 to $40 million, had won Matsuzaka instead? Yes. Would I rather have a new Skyline GT-R parked in my garage? Yeah, I think I would.