Red Sox Offer Tazawa $6M

Sanspo is reporting that Red Sox VP for international scouting Craig Shipley spent 1 hour 50 minutes negotiating with Junichi Tawaza, resulting in a $6M contract offer. No word on whether it's a major league deal or not.

The Yomiuri has a brief mention of an offer from the Mariners, including appearance and innings-based incentives. If that's true, I hope those incentives are a few years down the road as this is a 22 year-old kid who's already been overworked by his industrial league team. The Indians and Tigers meetings with Tazawa made the Japanese news, but so far I haven't seen any reports of contract offers from either team.

Tazawa's Eneos career ended with a loss to JR Tokai in the final tournament of the amateur season. After pitching shutouts in the first two rounds of the tourney, Tazawa entered the semi-final game in the 7th inning with runners on first and second and the game tied 2-2. Tazawa gave up a single that scored what proved to be the winning run. The victorious JR Tokai went on to lose to Toyota in the final. (Here's the Kyodo English-language writeup)

In the spirit of keepin' it real, here's a great article from Jim Allen, and a great response from Aaron Shinsano of East Windup Chronicle.