Red Sox Land Matsuzaka At the Bargain Price of $52M
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.
Yesterday, within minutes of CNNSI.com breaking the story that the Boston Red Sox had come to an agreement with pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka that will pay him $52 million over the next six years, I received an email from a correspondent reminding me that I had promised to eat my own head if the Sox managed to sign the pitcher for $8 million a year. While no head-eating will take place, I wouldn’t have been much more surprised if I discovered I was able to perform this feat than I was to learn of the deal. Matsuzaka got rooked. He’s making as much money as oft-injured no. 5 starter Adam Eaton.
The reasons the Sox were able to strike such a deal are obvious. Matsuzaka was not a free agent, and so was in a bad, though not intractable, negotiating position. When it came time to make a choice, he decided he’d rather play in America for a sure $52 million than play out his contract in Japan and test the market in a couple of years, incurring in the meantime the risk of catastrophic injury and missing out on a chance to test his skills at baseball’s highest level while in his prime. Good for him — just as workers have the right to make what they’re worth without taking stick for it, so do they have the right to make less if it puts them in a good situation. Matsuzaka is a role model for our nation’s youth.
Now that the dealing is done, we can turn our attention to what matters here: The Red Sox just signed a 26-year-old ace pitcher who’s probably the equal of anyone in baseball outside of Johan Santana and Roy Halladay. No, Matsuzaka has never pitched in the major leagues, but he’s hardly an unknown quantity. A conservative estimate of how good he is classes him with pitchers like Chris Carpenter and Carlos Zambrano. He’s more likely to perform badly than these established veterans but also more likely to put up numbers out of Pedro Martinez’s prime. In addition to statistics and scouting reports that project him as, at worst, a no. 2 starter, there’s the matter of style: Matsuzaka combines great pure stuff with a novel approach. Imagine 1998 vintage David Cone or Orlando Hernandez with a 96-mph fastball; that’s the Red Sox’s new ace, and it’s probably going to take the league some time to adjust.
How far does this swing the balance of power? Consider that Matsuzaka will essentially be replacing Matt Clement (6.61 ERA, 65.1 IP), Kyle Snyder (6.02 ERA, 58.1 IP), Jason Johnson (7.36 ERA, 29.1 IP), and David Wells (4.98 ERA, 47 IP) in the Sox’s rotation. As a ballpark guess, the difference should be on the order of six wins, possibly more, with the assorted fringe benefits associated with a stable top-ofthe-rotation pitcher, such as rest for the bullpen and the ability to match up against other teams’ top guns. A front four of Matsuzaka, Curt Schilling, Josh Beckett, and Tim Wakefield is about as imposing a group as the league has to offer.
This deal has another benefit for the Red Sox. The team will essentially be laying out $17.2 million a year for Matsuzaka between his salary and the $51 million posting fee paid to the Seibu Lions for the right to negotiate with him, but of that, only $8.7 million a year will count toward the Boston payroll. This matters because Major League Baseball taxes payroll above certain limits, which change annually. (This year the figure is $148 million.) The tax is 22.5% on expenditures above the limit in the first year a team exceeds it, 30% the second year, and 40% each subsequent year. It’s also, as a matter of baseball culture, essentially a salary cap; the only team that pays the tax is the Yankees.
By managing to finagle a $17 million pitcher onto their books for half that amount, the Red Sox have performed a neat bit of sleight of hand that will allow them to squeeze nearly $8.5 million worth of ballplayers onto their payroll without hitting the luxury tax limit — a limit that’s especially significant because of that escalator clause.
From the Red Sox’s perspective, then, this is a monstrously good deal. They’ve secured the best pitcher on the market not long after snagging J.D. Drew, who was arguably the best available positional talent, and managed to pick up some significant tax benefits for their troubles. The way their rotation shapes up right now, it looks like their worst starter will either be Beckett, who at this time last year was considered the pitcher most likely to break out in all of baseball, or Jonathan Papelbon, whose ERA was below 1.00 this year. This team is a beast in the making.