Per Roch: Orioles are not bidding on Darvish.

[erb8472]

People say this, but I wonder why? From what I understand (and I've had the same debate here before), the Japanese teams are not allowed to choose which posting bid to accept. They are forced to pick the highest one. So a move like that would more likely just cause the posting system to be abolished.

Also, who's to say what a "good faith" effort really is? When the A's failed to sign Iwakuma after winning the bid, no one thought it was a big deal.

Or for them to implement where you have to pay a certain percentage of the posting fee regardless of if you sign the player.

Bottom line is that if you post just to keep him from signing anywhere it's not going to go over well and you risk removing Japanese players from signing with your club.

[square634]

Or for them to implement where you have to pay a certain percentage of the posting fee regardless of if you sign the player.

Bottom line is that if you post just to keep him from signing anywhere it's not going to go over well and you risk removing Japanese players from signing with your club.

Here's an interesting article that just recently appeared in the NYT. I hate to say it, but I honestly think the general outline (if not the specific numbers) of Boras's proposal makes a lot of sense.

[NewMarketSean]

Why sign Darvish when you can sign 3 Japanese pitchers who dont add up to be one half of Darvish?

[erb8472]

Why sign Darvish when you can sign 3 Japanese pitchers who dont add up to be one half of Darvish?

Same reason I get 1 Double Cheeseburger instead of two cheeseburgers. Cheaper.

[Can_of_corn]

Why sign Darvish when you can sign 3 Japanese pitchers who dont add up to be one half of Darvish?

Cheaper, distributes the risk, the O's have multiple holes to fill.

[weams]

I guess DD and PA were 2 of the "no" votes in the Yu poll.

Sent from my SGH-T959 using Tapatalk

I am certain it was Andy MacPhail that chose to keep Peter's money for him.

[JTrea81]

Let's not forget Darvish himself. He's said to be a bit of a prima donna. Perhaps the scouting reports they got back included his makeup and Buck wasn't in favor of a guy who might be "soft."

[blid]

This is a terrible decision but I know we never would have won the bid anyway, so...

[Capn Vivi]

The Orioles are not close to contention so it only makes sense that they spread out the risk. As much as I would have liked to see Darvish pitching in an Orioles uniform next season, the baseball fan in me is still excited to watch him pitch, wherever it may be (hopefully Texas).

Even without posting for Darvish, if we sign Chen and reinforce our pitching staff in other ways (as well as trade Guthrie/Jones) I can hardly complain about our moves this offseason. Signing Darvish was a pipe dream anyway.

[crawjo]

This makes sense. Word is that Darvish only wants to go to a West Coast team, so the Orioles would have to overwhelm him with an offer to have any chance of getting him to sign. At the end of the day we'd be talking about an investment well in excess of what the Red Sox made with Matsuzaka, and I don't think that's the right kind of risk for the club to take on right now.

[olehippi]

I really can't get upset that the Orioles are not going to bid a fortune - $50M or more - for the rights to Darvish, whose odds of being successful in the ML is probably 50% at best.

[OrangeJerseys]

Nothing to see here. "Nobody" is bidding on Darvish.

[TakebackOPACY]

Okay, so I guess I'm close to being alone in saying that this is probably the correct decision. I guess I'm with others who said they ought to throw out a bid at whatever amount they do think they could handle. Though, for reasons stated by CaptainRedbeard, I do think it's really weird that they'd say they weren't bidding. This has to be Roch getting a scoop he wasn't supposed to get. EDIT: I guess it depends when he got the scoop since bids have to be in by now.

Seriously, does nobody out there think this is just strategic posturing? Do you think the Yankees and Rangers are also not bidding just because it's been reported that way?

http://www.star-telegram.com/2011/12/13/3593058/rangers-not-expected-to-be-among.html

http://www.newsday.com/sports/baseball/yankees/wary-yankees-might-not-bid-on-darvish-1.3379602

Do you see Rangers and Yankees fans up in arms about the exact same news? It doesn't mean anything, it's just an effort to drive his price down.

Good point. EDIT: Except that the 'O's not bidding' story didn't leak until the bidding process was just about to close, anyway.

This the only reasonable explanation why the Orioles' wouldn't submit a bid, and I would be pretty upset if that was the case because it's a very weak argument (from the Orioles' perspective, not srock's). I can't imagine that submitting a bid is all that time-intensive, so DD would have to be 100% convinced that it's a total waste of time to not even bother. Also, it would be highly uncharacteristic for a team to sink resources into scouting a player and then give up on pursuing them without making even a minimal effort. Aren't the Orioles the champions of the token offer?

The fact that every team that I can find has used the same method of posturing (can anybody find evidence of a team official for ANY team saying they will bid?) means that we shouldn't take this report seriously. I doubt very much that the Orioles will win the negotiating rights, but I doubt even more that they aren't even trying. They won't win because their bid is too cheap, not because it doesn't exist.

Nearly every post in this thread is using this report as a means to confirm their preconceived notions of Orioles futility. While this attitude is justifiably founded on a decade and a half of misery, I think this is a rare occasion in which there are more objective reasons to not believe this report than to accept it as fact.

One educated guess might be that teams might have to show the cash on hand or validation of financing. I'm sure this size of bid is financed. Regardless, the work to arrange it would definitely already be happening.

I don't get why you wouldn't submit a bid of something like $20M. Just doesn't make sense to me. Bid what you're willing to pay, and if you don't win with that, then you'll feel okay. And if you do win, then nobody else can get the player.

It is possible within the MLB-NPB Agreement, though highly improbable, that a lack of good faith by the team with the winning bid could force the 2nd bid to stand.

Yeah, that's what I mean. Why not bid something higher than you are really comfortable with, like $65 million, and offer him an insulting low-ball deal, like 8 years @ $4.25 million per. He would definitely go back to Japan, and if for some reason he calls the bluff (which he has basically zero incentive to do), you have him at effectively 8 years/$99 million, which isn't so bad.

Because you have to have the $65m on hand or financed. And because if they were willing to do this, then they would be doing it. So they must not be willing to do this.

People say this, but I wonder why? From what I understand (and I've had the same debate here before), the Japanese teams are not allowed to choose which posting bid to accept. They are forced to pick the highest one. So a move like that would more likely just cause the posting system to be abolished.

Also, who's to say what a "good faith" effort really is? When the A's failed to sign Iwakuma after winning the bid, no one thought it was a big deal.

Iwakuma's camp thought it was a very big deal. But his old team apparently didn't throw a stink... and the player is in the weakest position of all those involved. Darvish is certainly posturing to change that.

Let's not forget Darvish himself. He's said to be a bit of a prima donna. Perhaps the scouting reports they got back included his makeup and Buck wasn't in favor of a guy who might be "soft."

In this light, I wouldn't be surprised at all if, behind the scenes, Darvish's camp is pressuring certain teams not to bid; threatening to make the negotiations a nightmare, leaking a big contract number that it'll take to get him signed. As you know, there have been conflicting reports concerning Darvish wanting a low bid so he's more likely to cash in, and wanting the prestige of a higher bid than Dice-K. And of course it's recently leaked that he'd prefer to play on the West Coast... for whatever that's worth.

[TakebackOPACY]

I think for the Orioles, this story is over tonight. But I think nationally, this story and the upcoming negotiations are going to be a complete Cluster-!

[hoosiers]

This the only reasonable explanation why the Orioles' wouldn't submit a bid, and I would be pretty upset if that was the case because it's a very weak argument (from the Orioles' perspective, not srock's). I can't imagine that submitting a bid is all that time-intensive, so DD would have to be 100% convinced that it's a total waste of time to not even bother. Also, it would be highly uncharacteristic for a team to sink resources into scouting a player and then give up on pursuing them without making even a minimal effort. Aren't the Orioles the champions of the token offer?

Why would this not be a time-intensive exercise? One has to develop projections for Darvish (or accumulate various projections and analyze those) while taking into account internal and external scouting reports; convert those projections into a $ value, determine the best way to combine a posting fee with a contract of various multiple years (while trying to determine what posting fee other organizations might bid), etc. I do not believe this is rocket science, but it would be more than a few hours worth of work to develop a quality analysis and then review it with DD. I am not saying it would not be worth someone's time to put together this analysis, but I understand if the Os have determined they will not be major players here and decline bidding - hopefully, based on at least cursory scouting reports and projections of cost.

Regarding other issues on this page, why should we bid to win and then decline to sign him? We want to have a good reputation in Japan, right? And what have large market teams gained in this posting process. I would prefer the BoSox to have DiceK and his cost relative to performance than to not have him. Same for most of the posting fees involved with a majority of Japanese pitchers.

The process of posting really stinks and appears skewed to the clubs with more $ for payroll, but so far that process has not produced much of an advantage for those clubs regarding pitchers as far as I can tell.