Prior to 2010, former Boston Red Sox and current Texas Rangers prospect Roman Mendez entered the season with significant helium. After falling flat in his first taste of the South Atlantic League, Mendez was dealt as part of a package for Jarrod Saltalamacchia and became a reclamation project for the Rangers organization.

Fast forward a season and Mendez is once again a pitching prospect to watch after posting a 3.06 FIP in Hickory including a stellar 10 strikeouts per nine innings. The young right hander also drastically improved his control as his walks per nine fell from nearly five in 2010 to a shade under three and a half this past season. With Mendez earning mid-summer buzz once again, I ventured three hours to Greenville to scout him versus Xander Bogaerts, Brandon Jacobs, and the rest of the single-A Red Sox.

Video after the jump

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With a total commitment of around $111 million, Yu Darvish certainly didn’t come cheap for the Texas Rangers. While the team may expect to recoup some of that investment through generating revenues associated with having him on the team, it’s not very easy to plan a trip over from Japan to watch a starting pitcher, so we should be careful projecting large attendance gains based on having Darvish on the roster. And, while some may argue that the $51 million posting fee was a separate expense than player payroll, it’s still money the organization no longer will have access to that was a direct cost of having Darvish on the roster. Regardless of how the Rangers account for it in their ledger, it’s part of his expense, and needs to be considered when evaluating just how well Darvish needs to pitch in order to justify the Rangers decision.

So, how good does he need to be in order to accumulate approximately $110 million of value over the next six years? At $5 million per win with five percent annual inflation, the Rangers would be paying for +19.7 WAR during the life of the contract. If you think inflation’s going to be a little less than that, then you’ll come in around +21 WAR, a little more and you’ll be closer to +18 WAR. Most reasonable assumptions in terms of the current and expected future market for wins will lead you to somewhere in the general range of +20 WAR as Darvish’s target.

So, how reasonable is it for the Rangers to expect +20 wins of value from Darvish over the next six years. To answer that question, I decided to look at rolling six year windows over the last 10 years to see just how many pitchers have generally been able to perform at that kind of level. Here are the totals for each six year window since 2002:

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One month ago, the Rangers were awarded the rights to negotiate with Yu Darvish for a posting fee of $51.7 million. Surely, the announcements of the details of the contract will not come until right at the 5:00 PM Eastern Time deadline, but all indications as of now point to the Rangers reaching a six-year deal with the Japanese phenom (as reported by CBS’s Jon Heyman).

Although there are occasions where negotiations break down between Japanese imports and their American clubs — Hisashi Iwakuma with Oakland last year, for example — the big names have always agreed to a contract by the one-month deadline. For both the Rangers and for Darvish, there was simply too much at stake not to reach a middle ground.

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The Texas Rangers organization is solid top to bottom with both high-ceiling talents and depth. In looking at the Top 10 prospects we can see that the organization’s main strengths are pitching and up-the-middle offensive players.

1. Jurickson Profar, SS
BORN: Feb. 20, 1993
EXPERIENCE: 2 seasons
ACQUIRED: 2009 international free agent
2010-11 TOP 10 RANKING: 1st

The Rangers organization already has a dynamic young shortstop in Elvis Andrus but Profar gives them a second potential all star player at that position. In fact, he has the potential to be even better than the incumbent. Playing well below the league average age in ’11, Profar showed an outstanding understanding of the strike zone, and he showed his advanced understanding of the game by going to the plate with an idea of what he wanted to do. In the field, the young player has a strong arm and excellent range. He could develop into a plus defender in time. Look for Profar to begin 2012 in high-A ball but he could see double-A by mid-season.

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As Jim Breen discussed earlier, the news that the Texas Rangers have had talks with Prince Fielder raises all sorts of interesting possibilities. For 2012, a Rangers team with Fielder at first base would pose a formidable offensive threat, given that first was one of their few holes when they were batting in 2011. A Rangers batting order featuring Fielder batting behind Josh Hamilton would be frightening for opposing pitchers, indeed. This much is obvious, but such speculation raises further questions.

Hamilton himself is currently set to become a free agent after the 2012 season, after all, and has recently given a Pujols-esque condition that he will not enter negotiations for an extension once Spring Training begins. Hamilton has had a very good run with the Rangers, of course, winning the MVP with a monster season in 2010 and leading the Rangers to their first of two straight World Series appearances. It is hard to say what sort of payroll the Rangers are budgeting for given all the new cable money coming in. The team seems determined to sign Yu Darvish, too. Perhaps they could afford long-term extensions for both Fielder and Hamilton on top of Darvish. But to engage in a bit of (non-unique) speculation, if they can only afford to either sign Fielder to extend Hamilton, which should they choose?

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The two teams most often connected to free agent slugger Prince Fielder are the Washington Nationals and the Texas Rangers. The Nationals are largely considered the leader in the clubhouse for the Fielder sweepstakes, though the Rangers reportedly met with Fielder and Scott Boras over the weekend for preliminary talks.

Signing Fielder to a long-term deal puts any organization into a precarious financial position. He is a legitimate +5 or +6 win player at this moment, but his defensive liabilities and his physical build have caused organizations to question whether that level of production will last over a five-plus year contract. Those concerns remain the primary reasons as to why the 27-year-old first baseman is still available.

Pushing aside those financial worries, though, and simply viewing baseball as athletic entertainment, Texas would perhaps be the most enthralling landing spot for Fielder this winter. The addition of his bat to the Rangers’ lineup would transform the second-best offense from 2011 (ranked by team wOBA) into a bona fide juggernaut next season.

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Barry Larkin’s election to the Baseball Hall of Fame has generated the usual amount of celebration and argument this week. Most of the debates — about Jeff Bagwell, Alan Trammell, Tim Raines, and, of course, PEDs have been covered at length, so I will not pursue those topics immediately (I discussed this year’s ballot elsewhere). I do have other thoughts about the Hall of Fame, inspired by a combination of my thoughts about third basemen in the 1970s and Grant Brisbee’s tremendous piece about Trammell’s difficult candidacy. And that led me to reflect on the short-lived candidacy of a player whose career numbers may surprise you: Buddy Bell.

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It really seems as if Manny Ramirez wants to play in the major leagues in 2012. He’s had a rough go of it since last April, having a brief and ineffective stint with the Tampa Bay Rays that ended when he retired to avoid the ignominy of a 100-game suspension for a positive PED test. Yes, Manny brings baggage, and he will be 40 in May. However, despite the way things ended in 2011, Ramirez has a long record of impressive offensive production. It is hard to say which teams might actually be interested, but what teams even have a place for him? Not many, and league-wide interest (understandably) seems tepid so far. But if we scour the league, some possibilities do appear.

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On Monday night, the Nippon Ham Fighters announced they would accept the Texas Rangers’ $51.7M bid for 25-year-old right hander Yu Darvish. The decision ended a months-long rumorfest concerning Japan’s best pitcher last season — and put on full display the oddity that is the Nippon Professional Baseball posting system.

Much digital ink has spilled in service to the tricky nature of the MLB-NPB player transfer process. It stinks of inefficiencies; it dances around yet-fully-realized moral hazards; and it is, quite possibly and quite rightly, nearing its demise.
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The Rangers have wasted little time waxing nostalgic on the C.J. Wilson era, as they have topped the bidding for Yu Darvish with a reported record $51.7 million bid that could keep their rotation forever young.

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