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Land of the Rising Rotator Cuff Surgery

Scott Boras would never, ever, overhype a client. Baseball franchises would never succumb to a panicked herd mentality in the free agent market. Sportswriters and fans would never overreact to the first news from the Hot Stove League.

Sure they wouldn't. That's why five clubs are bidding at least $25 million just for the rights to TALK to Japanese righthander Daisuke Matsuzaka. The 26-year old is the official next big thing, the toy all big-budget clubs want under their tree.

The result is a fast-acting market bubble, in which otherwise sensible people are saying and doing things they'll regret by spring training. ESPN reported a rumor the Red Sox offered as much as $45 million to the Seibu Lions for negotiating rights to Matsuzaka. That's a significant sum for the opportunity to be sent to the cleaners by Boras yet again.

Matsuzaka's merits as a pitcher are now beyond realistic appraisal. In the course of ONE Boston Globe article this morning, the hurler was compared to Tom Seaver, Curt Schilling, David Cone, Mike Mussina, and Greg Maddux. The best comparison to Matsuzaka would be Sidd Finch, the mystical Mets' phenom. Nobody'd ever seen him pitch either. George Plimpton made him up.

Delving through the misty adjectives for data, we find two significant facts about the soon-to-be-ludicrously-wealthy Matsuzaka. He has superior but not overwhelming stats in the Japanese majors (108-60, 2.95). He's also thrown 1400 innings there.

Fourteen hundred innings! That's 240 innings per season for five straight seasons. Even back in the dark pre-La Russa ages, teams wouldn't give a pitcher in his early 20s that sort of workload. Either Matsuzaka is Joe McGinnity reincarnated, or he's a $75 million set of MRIs waiting to happen.

Paging Dr. Jobe, Dr. Andrews, Dr. Jobe!

posted by Michael Gee @ 8:05 AM