The Handshake
Man are those Red Sox slick.
How's this for scheisty: the Red Sox won the bid for Daisuke Matsuzaka. You probably know this unless you've been living under David Ortiz's jock strap. They had a month to sign him before he goes back to the Seibu Lions for the year and the Red Sox lose their rights.
Well, things aren't going well. Apparently they're very far apart on the details. Like -- the Red Sox want to offer him $7M a year, he wants $15M. That's a big difference. The deadline is Wednesday. So the Red Sox are feeling the burn and have decided to cheat the system.
Basically, they want the Lions to pick up a portion of his salary, which they could take out of the $51.1M they'd be receiving from the Red Sox. Because if the Sox don't sign Matsuzaka, the Lions get nothing. Think about it like this. If the Lions pick up about $20M on the deal, they'll be clearing $31.1M. That's not as much as they should be making, but it's better than what they'd get if the negotiating falls through.
The Sox have announced that they're prepared to up their offer, but Scott Boras believes his client is worth $100M, and it's unknown exactly what the Sox are willing to go up to. I still see them signing him by Wednesday, mostly because they'd rather pay the money and spare the national humiliation.
