Not that it hasn't happened before, of course, with an unproven (at the major league level) Japanese pitcher. Daisuke Matsuzaka cost the Red Sox $103 million in salary and posting fee in 2006, only to be topped by the $107 million it cost the Rangers to import Yu Darvish from Japan in 2012 (also a combo of salary and posting fee). But what does this say about the overall dearth of talent in baseball when teams are desperate enough to chance more than $100 million on a pitcher they hope will be a top-of-the-rotation starter, based on admittedly overwhelming statistics but in a league that is generally regarded as Triple-A caliber at best. If you don't believe that, just look at all the position players (Hideki Matsui and Ichiro Suzuki being the notable exceptions) who were stars in Japan — batting champions Kosuke Fukudome and Tsuyoshi Nishioka, seven-time All-Star shortstops Kaz Matsui and Hiroyuki Nakajima — but flopped miserably in the majors, at the same time such journeyman fringe major leaguers such as Tuffy Rhodes, Matt Murton and Casey McGehee went over to Japan and excelled.