Depressed Fan

I don't know if Daisuke Matsuzaka is going to be a perennial Cy Young candidate or another Hideki Irabu. No one does. All I do know is that according to SI.com he's on his way to Boston for a physical right now. If he checks out physically, he's going to sign a deal worth between $52 million and $60 million for six years. And someone should check out Theo Epstein and the Red Sox management psychologically.

If you add the $51.1 million the Sox are paying just for the rights to negotiate with him, that brings the total into the nine figures. They will have committed between $17.1 million and $18.5 million per year to a guy that's never thrown a pitch in the major leagues. He's only topped 200 innings in a season twice in his eight years pitching in Japan. How durable will he be? Can he handle a lineup full of great, patient hitters like he will face in the AL East? Does he have the psychological makeup to compete on the most pressure-packed stage in baseball, the Yanks/Sox series?

These are all important questions, and questions that should've occurred to the Red Sox before they came to this agreement. Scott Boras is laughing all the way to the bank, and for once I'm smiling about something the Yanks did. They didn't make this mistake.

In 1997 all the talk was about "The Japanese Nolan Ryan," Hideki Irabu, later he came to be known as "The Fat Toad." Steinbrenner absolutely had to have him, and he got his man. Luckily, this time he let someone else make the leap. And it was a huge leap. For the price the Sox are paying Matsuzaka, he absolutely needs to be a top 10 starter in the league to justify the cost.