Rangers win Darvish plus news and notes…
Dec 19, 2011, 9:06 PM | Updated: 10:09 pm
By Shannon Drayer
The news came down during the Hot Stove League Show that the Texas Rangers had won the bidding for the right to negotiate with Yu Darvish. Jeff Passan of Yahoo, who was the first to report this, says that the winning bid was a whopping 51.7 million dollars.
Darvish fills the one glaring need that the Rangers had as a top of the rotation starter. Tough no doubt for the Mariners fans to see but the fact of the matter is, the Rangers were going to pick up a top flight starter one way or another, be it now or at the deadline. Now they are spending an extra 51 million dollars to do it.
Of course they can afford it. They now have 30 days to work out a contract with Darvish or the posting fee is given back and he returns to his team in Japan.
News and notes…The George Sherrill signing is not yet official and most likely won’t be until after the holidays when the physical can be taken…Interesting piece in Forbes today as pointed out by Jeff Sullivan at Lookout Landing (and if you don’t read it, you should). Turns out that the Mariners current television deal which is dwarfed by the contracts that the Angels and Rangers have secured in their markets has an opt out clause that can be exercised after the 2015 season. More dollars could be on the horizon…