This one time, the Boston Red Sox paid $51,111,111 to gain exclusive contract-negotiation rights with a 26-year-old right-hander from Japan who had a 2.13 ERA and a 0.92 WHIP in his final season in Japan as a Seibu Lion. Three years later, a 23-year-old righty had a 1.73 ERA and a 0.90 WHIP as a Nippon Ham Fighter. Despite missing about a month’s worth of starts late in the season with shoulder fatigue, the righty won the MVP award for his league. He won Game 2 of the Japanese Championship series, doing so with a broken finger.

The first player, as anyone who doesn’t live under a rock knows, is Daisuke Matsuzaka. The second: Yu Darvish. The son of a Japanese mother and a motocross-racing, soccer-playing, Iranian father, Darvish is one of the three best pitching prospects in the world. The other two are Cuban defector Aroldis Chapman and Washington National Stephen Strasburg. Darvish has pitched professionally since he was 18, and for the past three years he has posted ERA’s under two, WHIPs under 1, and averaged over 8 strikeouts per nine innings. Darvish is one of Japan’s crazy characters. He’s kind of the Nippon Professional Baseball version of Terrell Owens, only better at his respective sport, a little less show-offy, and with a cooler name. His troublemaker attitude was more prominent in his early days as a pro; now he’s more of a Nick Swisher silly, rather than a Kanye West doofus. Ask anyone that has seen Darvish and Daisuke Matsuzaka pitch consistently, and they’ll tell you that Yu is better. The 6 foot 5 righty used to have one of those wild and crazy windups, but taught himself to move from Donterelle Willis-ish to Mariano Rivera-ish, becoming much more compact and simple with his motion and reaping the benefits. He has control (something Chapman lacks), professional experience (something Strasburg lacks), speed, and a repertoire of pitches that includes a hard slider, a 98 mph four-seam fastball, a two seamer, a curve, a forkball, a changeup, and a cutter. At least, those are the pitches that Wikipedia says he throws.

Darvish has 61 career victories, and I’ve heard he wants to get to at least 100 in Japan; that could take 2 or 3 more seasons. Yu becomes a free agent after the ‘14 season, at which point he will be 28. He should be posted before then though. For those unfamiliar with the process, to be posted simply means that a Japanese ball club calls up MLB, and lets it be known that a player has been “posted.” At this point, all teams have a certain timeframe in which they can submit blind bids for the rights to negotiate with the player. The highest bidder pays the Japanese team the value of their bid in cash, and then can negotiate a contract with the player in question. Daisuke’s posting fee was the aforementioned $51mm plus; he then signed a 6 year, $52mm pact with Boston. Since ‘07, when I first heard of Darvish, I figured he’d be posted within the next three years, but two years later he’s still making Japanese hitters cry. If the 100-win rumors are true, I’d expect Yu to be posted following the 2012 season. He would, at that point, be the same age that Matsuzaka was when he entered the MLB. With Yu’s superior skillset, estimates on his expected posting fee range from $60mm to $90mm. Remember, this is just for the right to negotiate with him. His contract with an MLB club would likely dwarf Matsuzaka’s. I’d expect something along the lines of a 7 year, $81mm contract. That could be a grand total of $171mm spent to sign Yu. Is he that good? According to all reports I’ve read, yes. Then again, that’s what we all heard about Jose Contereras and Daisuke, who, to different extents, have disappointed. However, Yu seems to be in a league of his own. His numbers are video-game-ish. He dominates his league to the same extent than LeBron dominates the NBA. Darvish is a player that GM’s have been yearning for for years. Remember the controversy when the Red Sox signed Junichi Tazawa before he went pro in Japan? The same type of situation arose in ‘04, when Darvish was 17, as the Mets, Angels, and Dodgers all wanted to sign him. Darvish, obviously, ended up playing pro in Japan, but one would imagine that if he signed then, he would’ve faced the same hype as Felix Hernandez has in Seattle.

The Yankees obviously have pitching depth with Joba Chamberlain, Phil Hughes, Ian Kennedy, Zack McAllister, Ivan Nova, Andrew Brackman, George Kontos, and Hector Noesi, just to name a few. Some of these guys will make it to the bigs and become good pitchers, others great. On the other hand, some will flounder and/or be traded away. Darvish is a guy who would be great. If he is posted, as I predicted, in 2012, expect the Yanks to put out an excessive bid (like the $90mm one I suggested earlier). Imagine a Sabathia, Darvish, Joba, Hughes, Burnett rotation in 2013; it could be the league’s best. Obviously, there are variables, obstacles, and all sorts of other whatchamacallits standing in the way of that dream team, but its fun  to think ahead.

Any major league team would love to have Yu now, rather than wait three years, but interest will still be high sky whenever Nippon Ham posts him. In one of the worst free agent markets for starting pitching in years, think forward to greener pastures when Japan’s Nolan Ryan will top the Yankee wishlist. If you can’t think all the way forward to 2012, then just imagine next offseason, when Cliff Lee, Roy Halladay, Josh Beckett, and Brandon Webb can all be free agents. Some questions to ponder are: who else will bid for Yu? Will the bids really go as high as $90mm? With his Iranian heritage, would Yu draw in a middle-eastern fan base in the same way that Chien-Ming Wang sparked Taiwanese interest in baseball? Or how Yao Ming got the Chinese to ooh and aww over the NBA? Would Yu live up to the hype, or be a number-two-or-three-type starter like Daisuke has turned out to be? Could he end up being as big of a bust as Jose Contereras? Or as big of a success as Ichiro and Hideki Matsui? It’s all about Yu.