Matsuzaka, Different Approach Part 1 of 2

Every other media outlet is using examples of Nomo, Irabu, Ichiro, and both Matsui’s. Are these relevant points? You betcha. But there’s no point in reading the same examples time and time again, so I’m not going to rehash the same old argument here. What we are going to do is look back to a similar instance of risk vs reward for a player that is unproven at the MLB level. The following happened after the 1996 draft:

”Because of four clubs’ violations to Rule 4 (E) of the PBA, which requires that teams make a formal uniform contract offer to every pick within 15 days of the draft, Major League Baseball granted several premium players free agency and touched off unprecedented bidding wars for their services.” (Baseball America)

In actuality four premium players were granted free agency. These players were still covered under baseball’s draft salary structure (approx max $300,000 per season if under three years experience), but due to this infraction there was no limit on signing bonus’ and they could negotiate with any MLB team.

Let the bidding begin! To put things into perspective, number one overall pick Kris Benson received a signing bonus of only $2,000,000, and top 1996 superstars Frank Thomas and Ken Griffey Jr. were making under $8,000,000 a season. Keep in mind, these contracts really only give a team three years of major league service from the players (at an additional $900,000 in salary.) Here are the results:

What a group. Outside of Patterson’s 2005 season, and maybe Lee’s 2001, basically every season put together by this group is sup-par (and that’s if they have even played in the majors, as White has just over 7 IP in his career.) But the success or lack thereof of this group should really have no basis on Matsuzaka, I just found it rather interesting to see close to $30 million thrown at a group that, for the most part, flopped.

The difference between the above group and Matsuzaka is pretty obvious; he’s played in the Japanese Professional League & has a multitude of international experience. The above players came out of high school or college. Yet both groups are similar in the fact that they had yet to play a major league game.

What conclusion can we draw from this? I’m not 100% sure what it would be. It may be that we can’t draw a logical conclusion, but we can use this as an example and at least it acts as a different viewpoint from the endless Irabu type examples. But, at the very least, it appears that teams are willing to spend legitimate, proven free agent money to land a hot commodity, regardless of MLB experience.

On Friday, we’ll have Part Two, where I’ll tackle the posting process of Matsuzaka.