Much Ado About Matsuzaka

This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.

The New York Sun

Tonight will, sadly, see the end of the winter’s best ongoing baseball drama, as the Boston Red Sox will either meet the deadline by which they must sign Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka, or they won’t. In an off-season that’s been dominated by mediocre teams spending wildly on mediocre players, this has been the one story that has involved a truly special player, which has alone made it more than worthy of attention. More than that, these negotiations have clearly showed how silly a game baseball can be.

Matsuzaka, 26, is the ace pitcher of the Seibu Lions. As is provided for under an agreement between Major League Baseball and the Nippon Professional Baseball League, Seibu put his rights up for bid in a blind auction last month, a way of getting money for him before he becomes a free agent after the 2008 season. (At that point he could sign with any team in the world, and Seibu would get nothing.) The Red Sox won by promising to pay Seibu a $51.1 million posting fee if they could convince the pitcher to sign with them within 30 days.

Complicating matters, Matsuzaka is represented by the best agent in baseball, Scott Boras, who holds curious notions about how to best serve his clients. For instance, he thinks they ought to be paid what they’re worth. This is troublesome for baseball teams that would like to pay players less than they’re worth.

Matsuzaka is worth an enormous amount of money. He’s probably one of the dozen or so best pitchers in the world, he’s just entering his prime, and outright bad pitchers like Gil Meche are being signed to contracts paying them upward of $10 million a year. If Matsuzaka were a free agent, he would most likely end up signing for something like seven years for $120 million.

Boras’s position is that Matsuzaka ought to make about that much money, as that’s what he’s worth. The Red Sox’s position is that Matsuzaka is not a free agent, and so ought not to be paid quite that much. Still further complicating matters is that posting fee, which Matsuzaka will not get a penny of if he signs with the Red Sox. It’s easy, then, to see what the problem is. From Boston’s perspective, they’re willing to lay out a sum close to $120 million to sign Matsuzaka: $51.1 million, plus a competitive (though not market rate) salary for the pitcher. From Boras’s perspective, the $51.1 million has nothing to do with anything. His concern is with what his client will make, not what his client’s prospective employer will spend.

In advancing his client’s interests, Boras has a fair amount of leverage. If the Red Sox don’t agree to pay Matsuzaka an acceptable amount of money, he can, after all, return to Japan. This is hardly a fate worse than death. If Matsuzaka plays out his contract with Seibu, he stands to make a lot more money than he would if he agreed to come over to America and play for the Red Sox. Why wouldn’t he do so? Is the allure of playing baseball in America really so great that someone should be expected to leave something like $50 million on the table to do so a year or two earlier than one would otherwise be able?

Many writers have suggested that Boras should be ashamed of himself for advising his client to return to Japan so that he, rather than his current ballclub, can lay hands on that $51.1 million. ESPN.com’s estimable columnist Buster Olney represented this line of thought when he asked this week, “For Scott Boras, when does this stop becoming a chase of dollars and start being about his clients’ doing what they love in their work and playing baseball? … Maybe the pitcher could wait until after the 2008 season, when he would become a pure free agent and — if he stays healthy, if his performance doesn’t decline — he might get $120 million. Or more. There could always be another nickel to squeeze.”

Here you see how odd the attitude is that many have toward these negotiations, and Boras, and baseball players generally. Olney is of course right that nickel-squeezing is to be deplored, generally, but Boras’s job, and legal obligation, is to squeeze nickels. He’s a professional negotiator. Further, the question of whether you or someone else gets tens of millions of dollars because you’re good at your job is not nickel-squeezing. That’s a lot of money. I’d work in Japan for a year or two in order to get a mere $5 million or $10 million I wouldn’t otherwise get.

For that reason, I hope that Boras advises his client to go back to Japan, and that Matsuzaka hits the market in two years as a fully unfettered free agent, able to enjoy the full range of negotiating rights offered by baseball. Because the problem here isn’t the idea that Matsuzaka should be paid what he’s worth, nor is it that the Red Sox don’t want to pay him what he’s worth plus $51.1 million. The problem is an unjust system that allows Japanese teams to pocket money that should go to the players who have earned it. It serves the interests of everyone but the players.

Just think the deal through. Say Boston signs Matsuzaka $12 million a year for five years, for a total of $111.1 million for five years. Who makes out?

Seibu gets $51.1 million they wouldn’t otherwise have had, and lose their pitcher’s services for the next two years. A good deal for them, as they’d have eventually lost him for nothing. The Red Sox certainly pay out a lot of money, but they get their advantages, too, not least among them that the posting fee doesn’t count toward the stiff luxury tax that kicks in when a team’s payroll reaches a certain threshold. Matsuzaka, meanwhile, makes tens of millions fewer than he would if he played out his contract, subsidizing Boston’s luxury tax discount and Seibu’s cash infusion. He does, though, get to wear a spiffy Red Sox cap a year or two sooner than he otherwise would.

Many seem to think that’s worth a lot. The Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo wrote Monday that “This was supposed to be the story of a fine young Japanese pitcher getting his chance in the big leagues for a big market team with a passionate fan base that is second to none.

“Does that matter anymore? Or has Matsuzaka been Boras-ized to the point where he’ll be used as a test case of the posting system? A protest? Where only the bottom line matters?”

Baseball is about money. The Red Sox understand this, the Lions understand this, and Boras understands this. Of these three parties, one is trying to get the most money possible into the hands of the person who really earned it — not out of any enlightened motives, but because that’s his job.

I don’t know how this drama will end up playing out, but I am sure that whatever happens will be for the best for the player, because he had the best professional negotiator available looking out for his interests. How odd is it that of these three parties, it’s the one looking out for the only unique and irreplaceable element of this entire complicated deal is the one who gets made out to be the villain?


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