Jeff Passan has just tweeted that the Texas Rangers have won the rights to Yu Darvish with a bid of $51.7 million.
Well, this is a fascinating development.
All summer, we heard about the Rangers' interest in Darvish, with various folks indicating that the 25 year old Japanese righthander was the Rangers' top target in the 2011-12 offseason.
After showing little interest in retaining C.J. Wilson or signing most of the other big-name free agents out on the market, the signs seemed to point towards the Rangers loading up for bear on a big run for Darvish.
Then, a couple of weeks ago, we heard otherwise...the Rangers didn't have the money to bid on Darvish, the TV deal wasn't as big as was being reported, Chuck Greenberg had to get $30 million and the scoreboard cost a bunch of money. The Rangers, it was reported, weren't going to be players.
Disinformation, it turns out...the Rangers, one has to believe, were downplaying their interest in order to keep the other teams off their guard, and hopefully have that lack of interest result in other teams issuing lesser bids, thinking that there was one less serious team in the mix.
More on this as it develops.