Yu Darvish Getting Comfortable In Rangers Camp

Pretty rosy, huh? Lots of people have lots of good things to say about Darvish’s debut. He missed an awful lot of bats. Thankfully, there’s Negative Internet Commenter to harsh any Darvish buzz you might have had going:

Sure, Darvish is great - now - but, that wrist action, I tell you. Gotta remember to listen to John.

Needless to say, it was a highly anticipated debut, albeit maybe more for media members than for the fans.

More video:

In case you’re unfamiliar with it, Oliver is the name of The Hardball Times’ player projection system. You know about player projection systems. There’s Oliver, and PECOTA, and ZiPS, and Marcel, and...

Projection systems love Yu Darvish. Oliver certainly loves Yu Darvish. Which is what this article is about. Here, we have Brian Cartwright trying to figure out Darvish’s best projection, using Oliver. Cartwright takes a very thorough approach. Towards the end:

↵If you’re asking yourself why Brad Penny didn’t get a similar sendoff from Detroit, it’s because he hasn’t signed anywhere yet, silly.

↵(From)

So that’s $10 million a year, right?

Well… on average, yes. But according to Jeff Wilson of the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram, it’s backloaded this way:

Galloway:

It sounds completely absurd, but there you are. It’s not my idea. It’s Randy Galloway’s. Randy Galloway is a print journalist. Besides, Darvish wouldn’t be the first player this offseason to influence a high-ranking executive by doing something completely unrelated to baseball.

a shuuto that looks like a two-seamer in the low 90s or upper 80s, a hard slider/cutter, a softer slider, a splitter, a straight changeup and a slow curveballWhich of course makes me think about the Great Gyroball Mania of ‘07, which makes me think of gyros, which makes me hungry. Also, why aren’t there breakfast gyros, with eggs, lamb, yogurt, et cetera? Someone’s missing out on a gold mine.

Law’s scouting report has a lot to say about the transition Darvish is going to have to make, both with his repertoire and his workload. It isn’t unusual for a Japanese pitcher to have a half-dozen pitches in his arsenal, whereas most MLB pitchers focus on three or four, at most, and Law thinks Darvish will have to adapt.

The great majority of us can’t simply watch a YouTube clip of Yu Darvish pitching and predict with any exactitude how well he’ll fare against the best hitters in the world this summer. So how do we get a handle on Darvish’s future as a Texas Ranger?

We can also look at Japanese pitchers who have brought their talents to this side of the Pacific, but again there haven’t been many of them. Not top starting pitchers, anyway.

This is something new, from Anthony Andro:

Darvish was recently said to be seeking a five-year contract, while the Rangers were recently said to be seeking a six-year contract. The implication was that Darvish wanted to hit free agency sooner. Now it appears that Darvish has gotten his way, kind of. I don’t know what the conditions are, or if there are any conditions, but there exists a way for Yu Darvish to make this a five-year deal instead of a six-year deal.

So now there are questions. How good will Yu Darvish be? Will Yu Darvish be worth the substantial investment? What does Yu Darvish think about ponies? Dustin Parkes at Getting Blanked tackles the first question, and then tackles the second question. I haven’t seen anybody tackle the third question, which is weird. Guess I need to check out more equine blogs.

Parkes, towards the end:

The takeaway point: people expect Yu Darvish to be successful. Unqualified people and qualified people alike. I’ll give you a few moments now to scrape your brain off the ceiling.

First, some explanation is in order in regards to projections for pitchers from Japan. Forecasts for players in the majors (or coming from the minors) are easier, in the sense that enough of a sample -- thousands and thousands of players and player seasons -- has been built up, increasing our confidence in the fortunes augured. Not so for players coming from Japan, as the number of players and player seasons we work with is exponentially smaller. Dan Szymborski, creator of the ZiPS projection system, explained this after the rights to Darvish were won:

That’s why projections for players coming from Japan might be overly optimistic or pessimistic -- we probably just don’t know enough yet, due to not having enough of a sample to work with. Two of the forecasts out for Darvish right now are those of Oliver (from Hardball Times) and Szymborski’s ZiPS. The two have little in common, despite coming from the same data source -- Darvish’s statistics from the NPB:

Prior to January 18, there was no contract. On January 18, there was concern that there would be no contract. But, officially, there is a contract. An agreement was reached right before the deadline. Because of course it was. There was really no other way that this was ever going to go.

Bob Nightengale:

From Jon Heyman:

Obvious. This is all obvious. It was always going to happen this way. We don’t yet know for how much Darvish will sign, but we knew he was going to sign, and that he was going to sign at the last possible moment. Leverage and everything.

Rangers general manager Jon Daniels and members of his staff worked much of the night (after working much of the day) with Darvish’s agents -- Arn Tellem and Don Nomura -- in an effort to get an agreement. But as of this morning, there is no agreement with some issues to still work out, though sources said the club still thinks a deal will get done before the deadline (though likely right up to that deadline).In a lot of ways, this is reminiscent of the deadline to sign amateur draft picks every August. There’s fretting. There’s hand-wringing. There’s a deadline. There are apocalyptic scenarios if a team can’t sign its top pick. And when the deadline rolls around, the teams sign the pick at the last second. Every time.

Well, almost every time. About five to ten percent of the time, a team can’t come to terms with their top draft pick. And that’s the fear that Rangers fans are right to have. The Rangers are clearly smitten with Darvish, enough to outbid every other team for the right to negotiate with him. They want to get a deal done.

Source confirms #Rangers meeting with Prince Fielder, but suggests the first baseman is Plan B if Yu Darvish doesn’t sign.

If such negotiations are going on. Which they might be. Or not. We’ll just sit and wait for this stuff to resolve itself.

The Texas Rangers bid $52.7 million just for the right to negotiate with Yu Darvish over the past month. But they didn’t pay $52.7 million. Not yet. If they can’t agree on a contract with Darvish before Wednesday, the Rangers will not have to pay the posting fee, and Darvish will head back to Japan.

Here’s where it gets tricky: the Rangers are right to think that the $52.7 million they’ll have to pay should be considered a part of their total Yu Darvish expenditure. And Darvish is right not to care. None of that money goes to him. It all goes to the Nippon Ham Fighters. So if the Rangers have designs on paying Darvish -- just to make up a number -- $75 million over five years, they’ll have to offer him a five year, $22 million contract, which is less than what Darvish would receive in Japan. That won’t work.

People have been talking about Yu Darvish for a long time. Such a long time. And for good reason - Yu Darvish is and has long been terrific. He’s young. He’s durable. He hasn’t posted an ERA north of 2 over the last five years. People stateside couldn’t wait for Darvish to be posted.

Along the way, the whole posting process was secretive. It had to be. There were conflicting reports on who was and was not interested. There were conflicting reports on how high the high bid would be. One thing was certain, though: some team, somewhere, would put a lot of money on the line. It was a virtual lock that Darvish would command the largest or second-largest posting fee in history.

From the indispensable NPB Tracker:

The other day, Sports Hochi reported that, in the event that he signs with the Rangers, the Nippon Ham Fighters will “semi-retire” Yu Darvish’s number 11. The number won’t be officially retired, but will remain unused until the team develops another “absolute, Darvish-caliber ace”.Reminder of what Darvish-caliber might mean: The right-hander didn’t post an ERA over 2.00 in any of his last five seasons. So when the Fighters say they’re just waiting for another Darvish-caliber pitcher to come around, that’s like the Yankees saying they’ll just hold on to that #3 uniform until they find someone worthy enough to wear it.

The Texas Rangers recently won the rights to negotiate with Japanese righthander Yu Darvish.

Now, according to this Japanese-language report, Darvish might either be in Texas or on his way there. Usually, Google Translate provides a good enough translation of foreign-language pages so that you can determine the gist. Not this time:

You might remember that in our last episode, I posited a theory that every baseball-related video would eventually lead to a skateboarding accident within six clicks. The theory was almost sound, but it turns out to be true with “girl fights” instead of “skateboarding accidents.” The rules are simple: Start with a video on YouTube, and follow the suggested links on the right six different times.

The theory with this one is that I’ll end up on an incomprehensible Japanese game show, possibly one with a six-foot-tall alarm clock wearing a bikini. Them’s the risks. But we have to start somewhere, so I’ll enter “super awesome Yu Darvish video” into the search engine:

* It’s popularly believed that the Red Sox and Rangers paid those figures to the Japanese teams merely for the right to negotiate, regardless of the ultimate disposition of those negotiations. No. The funds are transferred only if the player does eventually sign a contract with the North American club. Which almost always does happen.

Like Matsuzaka was in 2006, Darvish is still a young man; he won’t turn 26 until next August.

There are 29 teams that didn’t get Yu Darvish, and that means there are a lot of fans who are going with the sour-grapes method of processing that information. By law, fans are required to mention Daisuke Matsuzaka when disparaging Darvish. I mean, they totally came from the same country and everything.

Kevin Goldstein of Baseball Prospectus has a Q&A about Darvish up (it’s for subscribers, which you should be), and he details what Rangers fans should expect:

That leaves the most likely candidates as one of the two pitchers just recently converted to the rotation. Ogando threw 169 frames in 2011, most of it coming over 29 starts, while Harrison made 30 starts and tossed 185 innings. Ogando was booted from the playoff rotation, in part because he was tired: after posting a 2.92 ERA and walking just 23 batters in 104 innings in the first half, Ogando saw his command slip (20 walks in 64 innings) and ERA rise (4.48) in the second. It wasn’t a terrible performance by any means, but it’s fair for the Rangers to ask themselves if Ogando’s fatigue is going to be a permanent thing, or if it was caused by it being the first year of his switch to starting.

Sans context, there isn’t much difference between these two. Both have solid control, and while they don’t have excellent swing-and-miss stuff, they throw quality strikes and have FIP that back up their quality ERA. With the context of Rangers Ballpark in Arlington in mind, though, Harrison is likely the better pitcher to have in the rotation due to those grounders. Grounders are why C.J. Wilson was able to sign a long-term deal with the Angels despite pitching in Texas (and walking plenty of batters) his whole career, and they are why Holland is someone who needs to stick in the rotation, too.

So it wasn’t a huge shock. There was just this one thing. Ken Rosenthal is probably baseball’s most highly trusted news-breaker. He seems to be trusted far more than Jon Heyman, and while there are other good reporters, they’re either worse than Rosenthal or lower-profile. And just last Tuesday, Rosenthal wrote this article, with the following headline:

Okay, so headlines aren’t always written by the body author. How about some of the text?