Crazy stuff coming from the blog Pride of the Yankees involving one Daisuke Matsuzaka and speculation about the possibility that he could become a free-agent if the Red Sox continue to low-ball his asking price:
Okay guys, here's what I've heard through the grapevine on this...The Red Sox will hold out trying to lowball Dice-K [Matsuzaka]. And when I say hold out, I mean to the point where it becomes it was obvious just a blocking manuever [sic] to keep him from the Yankees. He wants $15Mx3Y, sox are offering 8Mperx4Y, "oceans apart". I've been told that if the Sox knew the Mets had the second highest bid ($38M), higher than the Yankees ($32M), they never would have bid $51.11 to win him. That comes from a very good source. Moreover, what I heard from the same source who is close to negotiations that what will happen is that Selig, Boras, and Seibu have a deal in place, where Boras pays Seibu $25 mil (1/2 the Red Sox bid) and he owns the rights to Matsuzaka, and puts him on the market BY X-MAS for the highest bidder, and Selig has signed off on it...
I find this EXTREMELY far-fetched and it sounds like some kind of crazy black helicopter theory, but I suppose anything is possible when it involves Scott Boras.
If, by chance, such a scenario actually plays out, I would imagine that the bidding system for Japanese players as we know it today would probably cease to exist because Boras would have opened up a whole new can of worms on how to beat the system.