Make It Happen: Matsuzaka to Boston

"Now pitching for the Red Sox, number 18, Daisuke Matsuzaka."

Hey, I can dream can't I? The deadline for teams to submit their posting bids to Major League Baseball is this upcoming Wednesday, November 8. As a result, there are more rumors flying through the airwaves and journalistic medium than flies around Sammy Sosa's career: "The Mariners are in, but wait, now they're out. The Rangers are in, and so are the Red Sox, but it doesn't matter because everybody knows he's going the Yankees." And so it goes, until we actually find out who has earned the rights to *gulp* negotiate with Matsuzaka and his super agent, Scott Boras.

Read that name at the end of the last sentence again, and it's clear that this whole process is going to cost some team a lot of money. The bidding process alone is going to cost someone a wad of cash, unless there's collusion of some sort and they all agree to bid less than $100 bucks. That would be funny. But, I digress. This is going to be an expensive process, something most front offices are hesitant to undergo when the player has yet to perform at the level of your league and a number of similar players have busted upon reaching these shores. Still, this is a chance to do what everybody needs: upgrade the starting staff and not give up the best prospects to get it. It's for that very reason that I think the Red Sox should try their gosh-darnedest to acquire Matsuzaka.

The one thing everybody can agree on is that pitching wins championships, and that quality pitching is hard to come by. The cheapest option is to develop it within your own system, but that takes time and patience, something some clubs don't have, especially if they're trying to make the most of their fanbase. The other options are to either trade for a top starter, or jump headlong into the typically shallow free agent pool and overpay for the hottest thing going. Trading prospects doesn't seem like a bad idea until you acquire Josh Beckett and watch your shortstop prospect vie for the National League Rookie of the Year Award, and your pitcher toss MLB's first no-hitter in 2 years. Free agency, unfortunately, is just as bad. As the Providence Journal's Sean McAdam write for ESPN.com, free agency isn't looking so hot lately, with more and more clubs doing what they can to lock up young pitchers before they hit the market, which means that somebody overpays for guys who don't deserve the big bucks.

Barry Zito and Jason Schmidt are the big names in the 2006 offseason, but neither, in my opinion, would be a good fit for the Red Sox. They're going to demand too much money, and they're starting to decline, visibily, in some cases. Matsuzaka is young enough to be worth a multi-year investment, and according to the scouts, he's the real deal. If the Sox could lock him up, that would be stellar. Even if he doesn't post his numbers from the Seibu Lions, there's a good chance the the numbers he post will make him very valuable. Over at The Hardball Times, Jeff Sackmann wrote an interesting piece called "Putting a Price on Matsuzaka," in which he mentions using some sort of metric to help convert Matsuzaka's Japanese stats into some sort of general MLB equivalent. The basic conclusion? He's probably worth it.

The biggest thing going for Daisuke is his age. Zito and Schmidt are a few years older, and there is a noticeable movement in baseball to lock up players as they approach their upside, not necessarily when they're in the middle of it. Of course, that's not to say the a 28 year old Barry Zito is a wash, but a 26 year old Matsuzaka seems a bit more tantalizing to a team looking to build a rotation for the next handful of years.

It's going to be an expensive venture, to be sure, but this is a golden opportunity for the Red Sox and any like-minded team. Forget Julio Lugo and kick the tires on the latest Japanese trend. Bring Daisuke Matsuzaka to Boston.

(Photo courtesy of Flickr.com and user Michiyo196.)