More importantly, how many 19-game winners can you find on the market at the price Wang was paid? This is why free agency is most likely going to rob him from another year playing for the Bombers. The only thing is that he is in mid-rehab, and there’s no way to tell if his injuries since 2008 has permanently changed his game, and if his climb back to his number one game will happen, and how soon it is going to be. 2009′s free agent market is relatively soft, so this means supply for this kind of a pitcher is low (especially now that the Braves have dealt and we’re probably done with the blockbuster pitcher trades this season). This is what the other 29 teams have in store for them if they want to poach him. In some ways, those two 19-win seasons are what is keeping him in this limbo, but playing for the Yanks means you have to perform, after all.

Certainly my hopes are that Wang sticks with the Yankees via a incentive-based contract, but it’s more likely that a team like the Dodgers will pick him up at this time, especially Vasquez resolves their rotation problem. There’s just no space on the roster for Wang.

Less can be said of Hideki Matsui’s tenure. Everyone knew he was gone even before the end of the post-season and he isn’t going to stick around, so that cut was clean and it ends his career in pinstripes(thus far!) on a very positive note. Good luck Godzilla.

Oh, which Yulin is this? Taken from here.

At any rate, Hideki Matsui homered for the 18th time this season last night, his second blast in the game in which a fan kinda-sorta interfered with Ichiro Suzuki during his leap at the right field wall. That means GoGo Curry for the third time in two weeks. It would be the third of four visits if today was a Thursday.

The good news is that despite Sunday’s loss, Wang pitched 3 scoreless innings. His sinker was sinking pretty much all except one or two times, and he pitched it pretty much 70% of the time, mixing in a slider here and there.

I just hope the guy gets back in the lineup, so I can go back to scheming for baseball tickets at the new Yankee Stadium to watch him pitch.

Certainly I know that even if my homies blew this year it doesn’t change my respect for all those tough Latin American teams playing their hearts out, and how Korea and Japan are keeping it real AZN. Yea it’s a lot of fluffy fanfare, but it’s also a necessary nod at the countries that love and produce all these foreign-born players that makes the American pro leagues that much more fun.

I think for the long-term health of the sport, pro or otherwise, something like the WBC is necessary. Considering it’s already cut from the summer Olympics… Isolated American sports-tards need to wake up and smell the coffee.

People worried about injuries and the money they miss out are missing the point. It’s a picture-perfect example of how greed ruins the sport. It’s not the richest team going out and sign the biggest free agents for $$$, even if that is probably a contributing factor. Hey Dice-k, you showed Castro something alright! Keep up the good work.

This rant is brought to you by my local FOX network sportscaster dissing the WBC. He can suck a big one kkthx.

You can read it from his blog, 38 Pitches.

More pertinently:

Please stop with the greedy bum statements too, all of you screaming that would be saying nothing if the Sox had ante’d up. I’m surprised but I don’t think nearly as much as most others. Why? Because not once, never, did you hear ANYTHING from Mark in this entire charade. This is how Scott Boras works, and his clients love him for it. Mark never said he wanted Boston, sources ‘close to negotiations’ did. That and a handful of nickels will get you a quarter.

Stop being surprised in these deals when you hear comments from EVERYONE but the players. Until the player speaks I am comfortable telling you more than 90 percent of what you hear is what teams WANT you to hear through their media ’sources’. Half of these folks get told things from teams because teams WANT that message in particular, out there.

and, obviously, because after all, he is on the paid-end of the equation:

I think the Steinbrenners, coming off a miserable last season in Yankee Stadium, are dead set on opening the new stadium with a World Series and they don’t care how much it costs. Good for them. You can bitch all you want about the Yankees and greed but they spend money in a sincere effort to win it all, every year. What fan wouldn’t want their teams to do that.

Sounds fair to me.

My own thoughts are along that line. There’s nobody to blame, really. Boras is doing his job by getting the highest buck for his clients. Let’s say even if Baltimore’s $140M over 7 years deal went through, it would only produce a 2.5-million-a-year gap to what the 8 year, $180M deal Tex signed. Would anyone cry bloody murder if the O’s got Tex? I don’t think so. And in some ways, Red Sox was silly for not paying that extra, what, $1 a year to seal the deal over Yankee’s offer.

I suppose this is a sign…that paying extra to get YES on DirectTV meant something.

The meta narrative about baseball and spend-to-win strategies, and the lopsidedness of a very successful franchise over the poor ones is for another day. It has wholly different implications, ones I’m not sure that would make the Yankees any more disadvantaged than before. Evening the playing field with a salary cap would just piss off talents like the likes of Sabathia and Teixera, and isn’t it those people fans pay the money to see?

What I would like to see is how the rest of this off season’s trades and bidding fall out. Not so much who wins or who loses, but the new teams that are formed by moving talents from one team to another.

But either way the Rays will still be a contender this year, and they can only get better from snagging a good free agent that they didn’t have before.

GoGo Curry is a Japanese curry fast food chain store. They sell Japanese-style curry in the same flavor, so they say, as the local curry eaten in Hideki Matsui’s home region. In fact, GoGo Curry is a Matsui-themed chain store. Back when Matsui was a Yomiuri Giants, he wore #55, which is “gogo” in Japanese, it became the name of the chain. Since Matsui has been a Bronx Bomber the past 5 years naturally the chain extended over here. The midtown store opened a year ago on May 5th, so this is their first anniversary–all dishes was $5 with some exceptions.

Well, that’s Hideki Matsui for you, potentially one of the all time, most famous sports idol in Japan.

But anyways, slugging aside, the curry is pretty good. It’s not my first time there but I feel the need to mention how it went. GoGo Curry, normally, gives out free topping coupons liberally–on the 5th, 15th and 25th of every month, and the day after Matsui hits a home run. Free topping coupons (limited 1 per person) gives you the choice of an extra chop of tonkatsu, chicken-katsu, shrimp tempura, or a couple Japanese sausages. I normally would get the small or medium shrimp tempura and use the topping card for a thing of chicken. The $5 sale, however, means you can’t use those coupons. Cost-wise you are paying less for more, because you can get a large chicken-katsu for $5. But if you want more, you gotta pay. So my routine “regular” costed the same, even if I can get a large instead.

They also gave out 5 topping coupons that day. I got James’ so I have like 15 coupons total. Ugh.

Curry anyone?