The Ranger Reporter

It cost them $57.1 million, but the Rangers won the right to negotiate a contract with Japanese phenom Yu Darvish. That broke the previous posting fee that was put up by the Red Sox to pick up Dice-K.  Darvish seems like the real deal. He’s big, throws hard and he then he has his pitchers.  The Rangers now have until January 18 to work out a deal.

One nice thing is, he’s only 25.  Last season he put up some impressive numbers in Japan.  He went 18-6 with a 1.44 ERA and 276 strikeouts in 232 innings.  He’s had an ERA below 2.00 for five straight seasons (but he’s had just two ERA titles and he’s a two time MVP.  The Rangers have been scouting him for a while and that hard work hopefully paid off because we should have an ace in the making.

The Rangers locked up Joe Nathan to a two year deal and now that the physical is out of the way, we can take a look at the numbers.  He’ll be paid $14.75 million and there’s also a club option for a third year at $9 million.  This is quite a bit for a guy who’s a year removed from missing a season.  In addition, there’s another $1 million in incentives that could come into play.

Last year, Nathan struck out 43 in 44 2/3 innings for a bad Twins team.  He saved 14 and had an ERA of 4.84.  Of course the big news out of this is that Neftali Felix will now become a starter and Nathan will slip into the closer role for the Rangers.