5 Feeling the Most Pressure

Yesterday, I gave you 5 individuals who will be feeling the heat of the respective situations they're stepping into this season. Today, here are the 5 individuals or groupings that will be under the gun more than anyone:

5. Gil Meche - Starting Pitcher, Kansas City Royals
The poster boy for free agency gone amok with his $55 million contract, Meche is going to be scrutinized like no other Kansas City player has been in years. He has the potential to actually live up to his contract because of his undeniably great stuff. But if that never translated into him blossoming into an ace in Seattle (another smaller market where the pressure isn't intense), then why should it here? I think on this Royals team, he'll be hard-pressed to collect more than 12 wins.

4. John Maine and Oliver Perez - Starting Pitchers, New York Mets
These two could be the difference between another near-miss for the Mets and a championship. Both were forced into prominent roles in the playoffs last year, and both performed admirably. Now the expectations have been raised, and these two won't be treated with kid gloves any more. On a staff where the top two pitchers are the ancient Tom Glavine and El Duque Hernandez, the young arms need to rack up quality innings. They could both easily blossom into 15 game winners with their potential and the run support they'll likely receive.

3. Daisuke Matsuzaka - Starting Pitcher, Boston Red Sox
A roll of the Dice-K. The Dice is Right. Boston headline writers are going to have a field day with Matsuzaka, and not just for his pun-able name. Enormous expectations accompany him into the pressure cooker of Fenway Park. A lot of experts said that if he were on the free agent market this offseason, instead of the complex bidding system that the Red Sox utilized to sign him, he would have been the clear #1 starting pitcher on the market, a notch above Barry Zito. With so much that's been said about him, it seems that he's got the stuff to succeed. But the first time he gives up 5 runs in an inning, the Boston media is going to be out in full force.

2. Alex Rodriguez - 3B, New York Yankees
There haven't been many players in recent history who've had their every move scrutinized the way A-Rod has been since he's donned the Yankee pinstripes. The problem though, is that he seems to be feeding the situation to greater heights than it probably deserves to be. He's clearly insecure about his status as a Yankee and it shows in his comments. He could hit .330 with 50 HR this season, but nobody is going to be satisfied until he shows it in the playoffs. Until he makes a conscious decision to disregard the criticism (easier said than done, I understand), I have to believe that his woes will continue.

1. Barry Bonds - OF, San Francisco Giants/Bud Selig - MLB Commissioner
There's no escaping it. These two will be inextricably linked in history. The man who broke the all-time home run record due in part to performance-enhancing drugs, and the man who allowed it to happen, even if indirectly so. Most likely, Bonds will break the record this year, and God help him if it's not in San Francisco. Wow. The reception he would get would be mind-boggling. And Selig isn't helping himself with his noncommittal response to the question of whether he'll attend the possible record-breaking game. When it does happen, it will be an incredibly important moment for baseball, for better or for worse, and to not have the commissioner there is unfathomable to me. If he's not there, it really appears like he's ducking the game purposely. Selig probably can't do anything about the Bonds situation now - his time to act came and went. But as baseball's spokesman, he needs to be there.

barry bonds
bud selig
alex rodriguez
daisuke matsuzaka
gil meche
oliver perez
john maine

Barry Zito, the Final Domino, Falls to the Giants

Is it just me, or did it seem to anyone else that the primary reason for the many bold moves in free agency this year, with cash being thrown at players like it was monopoly money, were to serve the purposes of Barry Zito?

Zito, the big free agent prize this year on the pitching side, is the last big name to sign this off-season, and it seemed like with every pitcher that signed a big contract, all you heard was that this would drive up the price for Zito. So Barry should thank Jeff Suppan, Daisuke Matsuzaka, and especially Gil Meche, for driving up his price tag to the $126 million mark that the Giants signed him to yesterday. Because of course, they weren't signing for their own good, they were just doing it to get Zito a big payday.


Of course I'm kidding, but a few things did pop out at me with this signing:

1. When the Royals can sign Gil Meche to a $55 million contract, it's clear that players no longer have to go to one of the New York teams to get a fat payday. To me, this was made abundantly clear with the Zito signing - if any player was destined for New York, be it with the Mets or the Yankees, it was him. But as it turned out, he could and did get his money somewhere else, San Francisco. It seems the off-season bidding wars are getting more competitive.

2. The Yanks' failure to get Zito may hasten their pursuit of Roger Clemens. The writing seems to be on the wall for fading star Randy Johnson in the Bronx, and New York will likely look to fill the hole in their rotation with Clemens with the failure to land Zito. The Red Sox, who are thought of as the other major player in the Clemens sweepstakes, do not have the need for him that the Yankees do with their signing of Matsuzaka, and may not push for him as hard as the Yankees will.

3. The NL West might have the best collection of starters of any division in baseball. Here are the presumed top 1-3 starters for the NL West teams excepting the Rockies:

Arizona:
Brandon Webb
Livan Hernandez
Doug Davis

Los Angeles:
Jason Schmidt
Brad Penny
Derek Lowe

San Diego:
Jake Peavy
Chris Young
Greg Maddux

San Francisco:
Barry Zito
Matt Morris
Matt Cain

That's an impressive group - should mean a good race in that division next season.

Matsuzaka Signing a Watershed Moment for Major League Baseball

After weeks of speculation and posturing that comes with any Scott Boras negotiation, the Red Sox finally signed (apparent) all-world Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka to a 6 year, $52 million deal today.

With the $51 million posting fee that Boston paid Matsuzaka's Japanese team, the Seibu Lions, just for exclusive negotiating rights, the Red Sox are betting over $100 million that Matsuzaka not only works out, but pitches like the ace pitcher that he's getting paid to be.

His success or failure is crucial because it may very well affect the way teams throughout Major League Baseball approach Japanese players. If he's a Cy Young contender, the pitching equivalent of Ichiro Suzuki, the Red Sox's risk in a fairly unknown quantity will be rewarded, and it may embolden other teams to look to the East in scouting players. The posting business (detailed wonderfully in this New York Times article by Richard Sandomir) will become a high-stakes competition. Meaning that for Japanese clubs like Seibu, Matsuzaka's success could result in a huge financial windfall. Washington Post writer Thomas Boswell says it well:

As for the Lions, they're swimming in sake now. Seibu, with a dinky $17 million payroll, gets a $51.1 million windfall because it "owns" the rights to Matsuzaka. For doing nothing, Seibu will get a check for three times its annual team payroll. That would be like a league from outer space offering the Red Sox $350 million -- three times their payroll -- so a team from Mars could try to sign Jonathan Papelbon.

The question now becomes: are the Japanese clubs willing to "sell their souls" and serve as the springboard for their stars, a pseudo farm system for Major League Baseball? If the answer is yes, then free agency in baseball has entered a new era where high revenue teams like the Red Sox and Yankees can now fight it out on two sides of the world. And with Major League teams showing an increased willingness to throw gobs of money at anyone with a pulse (Gil Meche anyone?), it seems likely that the cash will be too much for teams like Seibu and company to resist.

Here's a quick video of Matsuzaka's mysterious "gyroball."