Ken Rosenthal has a lengthy story up about the Yu Darvish situation, with Rosenthal saying that Darvish is expected to be posted soon after the winter meetings end. Rosenthal notes that the decision needs to come quickly if Darvish is going to pitch in the U.S. next season, simply because of the time involved in bidding and then negotiating, and the later that Darvish waits to announce, the more teams that would be interested in him will have already committed money elsewhere.
Rosenthal's column is full of interesting information and some quotes from anonymous folks, and the overriding theme is that no one seems to have a real good handle on what Darvish wants to do. A couple of interesting tidbits from the article:
"I am told the club and player cannot agree on what is an acceptable posting fee," a scouting executive with one club told Morosi.
"The player, I am told, is very quirky with a huge ego. Apparently, he will feel disrespected if the post is less than Matsuzaka’s was with Boston."
OK. . ..
Another scout who covers Japanese baseball says that Hokkaido badly wants to collect the posting fee on Darvish — and was stunned and disappointed when he chose to return to the team last season.