No I’m not referring to Jose Bautista. People who go out of their way to rag on the Mets like to note (now that Bautista has 43 home runs but not for the last 6 years when he sucked) that Bautista was once a Met. That is true, technically. They acquired him on July 30, 2004 and then traded him on July 30, 2004 – he never played a game for the Mets, so get over it.
This news is much more relevant to the Mets and their fans. It is a few days old but I just noticed it and thought it was worthy of filling space sharing. Former Met Craig Brazell, who was taken by the Mets in the 5th round of the 1998 draft and played 8 seasons in their system including 24 games with the parent club in 2004, recently hit his 40th home run for the Hanshin Tigers of Japan’s NPB. Hat tip to the great Japanese Baseball website NPB Tracker for alerting us to the feat. Japanese website Sanspo has a few photos one of which is below complete with google-translated caption.
Brazell once, two-run number 40. As a Tiger supporter since it reached the mark in 1986 Bath (Morita Tatsuya shooting)
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8 comments
stickguy
9/7/2010-1:25pm at 1:25 pm (UTC -4)
somehow this has to be taken into acocunt when deciding whether to pony up a $70,000,000 posting fee for a japanese SP!
njstuckintx
9/7/2010-1:28pm at 1:28 pm (UTC -4)
Is that USD or Yen?
stickguy
9/7/2010-1:32pm at 1:32 pm (UTC -4)
greenbacks.
saw a piece on Darvish potentially being posted (like Dice K was), and they mentioned $70mill as potentially the price required to win the right to even have a discussion with the guy about a contract.
Somehow, if the Mets end up winning that bidding (and are anywhere near that money, or even the 50mill that Dice K got), it should put to rest the “madoff bankrupted the Mets” rumors!
njstuckintx
9/7/2010-1:57pm at 1:57 pm (UTC -4)
When you look at what Dice-K gets paid, how he has perfomed and what the posting costs were, every sane member of an MLB front office has to think to themselves “why the hell would I consider paying this much for a player i know can’t live up to the costs…” Just crazy.
oleosmirf
9/7/2010-1:35pm at 1:35 pm (UTC -4)
Darvish might be one of the top 10-20 pitchers in the world right now. I would take him at any price
stickguy
9/7/2010-1:49pm at 1:49 pm (UTC -4)
not that many teams are likely willing or able to come up with that much money up front though.
even if they managed to sign him on the “cheap” (5 year/30mill say), that still ends up being a 5/100 contract. Or I guess what Lee could get. Except you aren’t spreading out the price over 5 years (unless, of course, the japanese team agreed to do it?)
This would be interesting if US teams could do it.
oleosmirf
9/7/2010-2:45pm at 2:45 pm (UTC -4)
given how nasty he is, you’d have a probable ace for the next 8-10 years.
metsfan4decades
9/7/2010-2:46pm at 2:46 pm (UTC -4)
If the Mets won’t eat sunk costs like Perez’s contract, I’ve not much hope they’ll go after Darvish seriously given the rumors I’m reading on what he’ll likely be asking for.
I can dream though.