Konichiwa Matsuzaka-san!

The Red Sox completed a deal with Japanese right-hander Daisuke Matsuzaka-san at the 11th hour yesterday. I haven't been this excited about the Sox acquiring a pitcher since the Duke obtained Pedro Martinez before the 1998 season. Theo and Company did a brilliant job staring down the devil (agent Scott Boras) in the high stakes poker game of negotiations and forcing him to fold. I think the deal is a great one for the Sox; Matsuzaka-san is under contract for six years at a reasonable salary. In fact, his salary is in line with the extension the Sox gave Josh Beckett last year. I think that the Red Sox and Scott Boras were both wrong in how they viewed the $51.1 million that the Red Sox posted for the rights to Matsuzaka-san. Boras was wrong to think that the posting amount should in any way correlate to the player's salary. The Sox were wrong to view the posting fee as part of the contract offered to the player. I think that the posting fee needs to be completely disregarded as soon as the winning bid is announced. The Sox are going to pay Daisuke Matsuzaka-san more than any Japanese baseball player ever and more than any untested foreign player. That's a great deal for the player and considering that the average annual value is less than $9 million it's also a great deal for the Red Sox.

Daisuke-san may or may not need a new nickname. I think his current nickname of "Monster" is fine. It works well considering that he'll be pitching his home games in Fenway Park with the "Green Monster" at his back. I seriously don't want people or the press to call him "D-Mat". I hate the "first initial, hyphen, first syllable of last name" nicknames. They aren't real nicknames. I hate "A-Rod", "I-Rod", "A-Gon", "T-Mac", "J-Wil", and every other iteration. If you hear someone refer to Daisuke-san as "D-Mat", please punch them in the mouth for me. For now I'm sticking with either "Monster", or "Pedro 2: Electric Boogaloo". I think I prefer the former.

The good news for Johnny Damon fans is that their home jerseys, with #18 on the back, are now a hot item again. I'm trying to locate a Seibu Lions #18 jersey. Nike appears to manufacture the uniforms for Nippon Baseball, but they don't seem to sell them stateside. It's too bad because the jerseys are nice and Nike is missing out on a revenue stream. I wonder if they are barred from selling the jerseys in the U.S. because they aren't the official jersey manufacturer of Major League Baseball. Any way you slice it, I think Seibu Lions jerseys would be big sellers in the New England area right now.