FanHouse - AOL Sports Blog

There aren't any Japanese players heading to the U.S. via the posting system this offseason. Kosuke Fukudome joined the Cubs as a conventional free agent and Hiroki Kuroda joined the Dodgers in the same fashion, but what about next year? There could be a frenzied bidding war for 20-year old phenom Yu Darvish brewing. Via East Windup Chronicle:

The Yu Darvish to MLB rumors may have just officially kicked off right along with the new year. A Sports Hankook (Korea) report, relying on a Japanese source (Sports Nikkan), says that the Yankees plan to nab Darvish following the 2008 season.

The report goes on to say that the Dodgers, Mets and Cubs have also made "love calls" to Darvish and that the floor of negotiations is something along the lines of what Daisuke Matsuzaka was able to command during his posting extravaganza in 2006.

If Darvish was already in the U.S. his hype would be on the same level of Phil Hughes and Clay Buchholz. He posted a 1.82 ERA with 210 strikeouts in 207 2/3 innings last season for the Nippon Ham Fighters and won the Pacific League MVP. That's more than Matsuzaka was doing at that age and Darvish just became the youngest player to sign a 200 million yen contract (about $2 million) in Japanese history.

After weeks of rumors, the Royals finally made it official and signed reliever Yasuhiko Yabuta away from the Chibe Lotte Marines.

"Yasuhiko has been one of the best relievers in Japan the last several years," general manager Dayton Moore said. "He will be an important veteran arm that will help add stability to the back end of our bullpen."

Yabuta, 34, is a 6-foot-2, 185-pound right-hander who spent the last 12 seasons pitching for the Chibe Lotte Marines in Japan's Pacific League. He was 4-6 last season with a 2.73 ERA and a career-high 38 holds in 58 appearances.

It doesn't hurt the Royals that Yabuta's new manager, Trey Hillman, has an understanding of the Japanese game and Japanese league players. Yabuta should not only fit right in, but thrive under Hillman. And now that the deal is finally done, the Royals hope to bring another pitcher from the far east to the land of good barbecue.

The wild card in the 2008 Free Agent Market has now officially joined the free agent market. Kosuke Fukudome, the right fielder from the Chunichi Dragons who's been compared to Ichiro Suzuki, has declared his intentions to come to the Western Hemisphere and play some ball, declaring himself a free agent.

"I'd like to see what kind of interest I get," Fukudome said at a news conference. "We'll see where this goes."

Fukudome, 30, is regarded as one of the best outfielders in Japanese professional baseball. He was a key member of the Japan team that won the inaugural World Baseball Classic in March 2006.

He had surgery on his right elbow in August and sat out the Japan Series, but has 192 homers and a .305 batting average over nine seasons with the Dragons, who won their first title in 53 years on Nov. 2.

There's no way to tell how his game is going to translate from the Chunichi Dragons to the Major Leagues. For every Ichiro or Hideki Matsui, there's a Norihiro Nakamura or a Saturo Komiyama. Don't know who they are? That's the point. Choice of team is also important ... look how much better Kaz Matsui's career became after leaving New York. Then there's that little problem of that right elbow injury. That plus the fact that he will be on the other side of 30 could trump any question about his ability to step up to the majors from Japan. If they're comparing him to Ichiro, (and you might too after watching Fukudome's skills) that shouldn't be a question anyway.

Let the bidding begin!

Previously on FanHouse:
Welcome to the Fukudome!

So Roger Clemens has "retired" yet again, but that doesn't mean that he's done playing baseball. No, I'm not talking about yet another comeback with the Yankees or Astros, but rather Team USA in the 2008 Beijing Olympics. From MLB.com (via Fark):

Clemens, if healthy, would consider pitching for Team USA in the baseball tournament during the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing, China, one of his agents told MLB.com on Thursday night in response to an e-mail question.

"I think, if things fell into place and he felt good, he would be interested," said agent Randy Hendricks about the 45-year-old Clemens, who has won 354 Major League games and pitched part of the 2007 season for the Yankees. "He loves the idea of representing his country."

Of course, he also loves the idea of making millions of dollars each time he starts a game, so he might be turned off once he realizes there's no compensation. (What, me, cynical?) If he actually goes through with it, though, it'd be a nice way to cap off his career. But if the World Baseball Championship a couple of years ago proved anything it's that winning a gold medal would hardly be a cakewalk -- and it'll be even tougher in the Olympics where players on an MLB 25-man roster aren't eligible to participate. Team USA won Olympic gold in 2000 in Sydney but failed to even make the 2004 games in Athens when they lost to Mexico in a qualifying round.

Previously on FanHouse:
Clemens to the Astros ... as a Consultant?

International Pastime will look at baseball's influence outside the U.S.



You may have forgotten that Felix Jose existed. I sure as heck did. But the Korean Baseball Blog points us to a 1999 playoff series between the Lotte Giants (Jose's team) and the Samsung Lions. The above video, from Game 7 of their series, featured Jose, a former Athletic, Cardinal, and Royal, hitting a home run and being pelted with various objects while trotting around the bases. Jose, in a completely calm, cool, and mature manner, proceeded to hurl his bat into the stands. Then, he used another bat to try to bust through a protective fence and knock a fan into next week.

And you thought the Roger Clemens/Mike Piazza incident was bad.

Jose almost won the triple crown that year in the KBO and that earned him another shot at the majors. He played a bit for the Yankees in 2000, and also had cups of coffee with Arizona in '02 and '03 on the strength of his 1999 season. Jose, believe it or not, was still playing baseball in July of 2007 in the Atlantic League ... after being suspended 50 games from the Mexican league for steroid use, of course.

Arm Bash: Korean Baseball Blog

We'll give human rights advocates three seconds before they hop on this story: the New York Yankees have accepted a sponsorship deal with their first Chinese partner, the Yili Group, the largest dairy company in Asia. The business angle, courtesy of Yankees' President Randy Levine:

"We are very pleased to welcome Yili to the Yankees family as our first sponsor based in China. The Yankees have always been committed to international baseball and international business and China is very important to us. This agreement with Yili is yet another example of how far-reaching the Yankees brand has become and how dedicated we are to growing baseball, and the business of baseball, in China."

Yili Products will receive advertising exposure at Yankee Stadium and in the team program in the deal. The Yankees will receive piles of sweet cash in return for partnering with one of the official sponsors of the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, a connection which brings in the genocide connection via Darfur.


Darfur: Brought to you in part by the People's Republic of China?

China's already feeling pressure over its support of Sudan's government, the same government responsible for mass killings of non-Arab Muslims in the Sudanese state of Darfur. Human rights activists have called for a boycott of the games in Beijing since China is the single largest investor in oil-rich Sudan and has actively lobbied against international sanctions for Sudan's actions in Darfur, claiming it would not interfere in the "internal affairs" of another country, even an economic partner openly committing atrocities against its own population.

The Yili Group, to be fair, has a good corporate reputation: by Chinese standards they treat their workers well, and aren't having Sudanese merchants slaughtered to make way for their line of snack crackers. Yet it's an example of the kind of issues the Beijing games will raise as corporations pour money into an event sponsored by a country that still practices forced labor, restricts speech by its citizens, and still has a gulag system for political prisoners.

The Yankees just agreed to do business with a company based in China, which makes them at the smallest of margins, an accomplice in Darfur. Then again, so is every American consumer who buys cheap lightbulbs at Target, or anything else made in China, for that matter.