Most signs point to Japanese ace Yu Darvish making the jump from Nippon Professional Baseball to Major League Baseball at some point this winter.
But to hear the right-hander tell it, on a personal blog no less, he has not completely made up his mind.
And probably won’t for a couple more weeks.
From Patrick Newman of the invaluable NPB Tracker comes this translation of a Darvish-penned blog post, dated October 19, 2011:
Articles saying “Confirmed: Darvish to the Majors!” have been appearing since yesterday.
As I mentioned on Twitter
Nothing is decided!!
I haven’t decided anything for myself so nothing can be confirmed.(^_^;)
It was an article from the Kyodo News, but what did they base their writing on?
You can say this is freedom of press, but with freedom comes responsibility.
I want a press that takes responsibility.
Every year, when I haven’t decided anything, they write “Majors this, Majors that”, but then when I don’t go they just make up excuses.
How did they write lies and escape responsibility?
Well, after the entire schedule is over, I will carefully think it over!
As soon as I decide I will let everyone know(^^)v
In other words, there will be no concrete decision until after the NPB schedule has concluded (at the end of this month). And even then, the 25-year-old emoticon aficionado still has some pros and cons to weigh.
We’d guess that Darvish will eventually chase the big bucks that will be available to him on this year’s shallow major-league free agent pitching market. The Blue Jays, Rangers, Yankees and others have already done quite a bit of advanced scouting and are surely preparing bids. But there are no definites yet.
Darvish, a 6-foot-5 starter from Osaka, entered the 2011 season with a 1.81 career ERA and 9.2 career K/9 in Japan’s top league. He’s been just as good this year, even improving that already-lofty strikeout rate.
