Texas Rangers surprise win bid for Yu Darvish with record breaking $51.7 million -MLB Update
The Texas Rangers surprised everyone when they were announced to be the winners of the posting bid accepted by the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fights for their Japanese player, Yu Darvish, for a record breaking bid of $51.7 million, late Monday night, December 19,
2011.
Major League Baseball (MLB) also made an independent announcement which confirmed the record breaking bid had been accepted by the Japanese franchise, which will only have to be paid after a deal is reached between the two stakeholders who have a 30 day
window to negotiate.
"The Texas Rangers are pleased and excited to have acquired the rights to negotiate with Yu Darvish," the team said in a statement. "Our organization has scouted Mr. Darvish for the last several years and has been very impressed with his abilities and accomplishments.
We believe he would be a great addition to the Texas Rangers pitching staff.
"We look forward to the next step of this process in the very near future with Mr. Darvish and his representatitves, Arn Tellem and Don Nomura," the Rangers added.
Earlier, it was believed that the Toronto Blue Jays were the frontrunners in the race to acquire exclusive negotiating rights to the player along with a number of analysts supporting the view not only due to the team but to the suitable environment as well,
but it was certainly a shock when the Rangers emerged out of the dust as the winners.
The Rangers were not out totally, their executives along with general manager, Jon Daniels, was seen in Japan watching the player time to time and it looks like they had liked him so much to do all they could to grab him with the record breaking bid.
Yu Darvish will not be the only Japanese player on the team as he will be joining reliever, Koji Uehara and Yoshinori Tateyama, who have also established themselves as well rounded players in the league.
Now, it will be exciting to see where the negotiation process with the Japanese sensation is headed as the Rangers will give it their all to acquire the player for the upcoming seasons.
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