On Thursday, Anthony McCarron of the New York Daily News reported that Japanese star Yu Darvish had requested to be posted by the Nippon Ham Fighters, his team in Nippon Pro Baseball (NPB, the Japanese major leagues). McCarron speculated that the Yankees might be interested (of course -- when are the Yankees not interested in players like this?).
But Darvish tweeted that he hadn't made a decision yet. Of course you can't read that (unless you read Japanese). And he also posted the same thing on his blog, which you also can't read unless you know Japanese (although it's helpfully titled "Thoughts of Yu" in English).
Fortunately for us, Patrick Newman, who runs the excellent site NPB Tracker, can read Japanese, and he has helpfully translated Darvish's comments:
Articles saying "Confirmed: Darvish to the Majors!" have been appearing since yesterday.
As I mentioned on Twitter
Nothing is decided!!
I haven’t decided anything for myself so nothing can be confirmed.(^_^;)
It was an article from the Kyodo News, but what did they base their writing on?
You can say this is freedom of press, but with freedom comes responsibility.
I want a press that takes responsibility.
Every year, when I haven’t decided anything, they write "Majors this, Majors that", but then when I don’t go they just make up excuses.
How did they write lies and escape responsibility?
Well, after the entire schedule is over, I will carefully think it over!
As soon as I decide I will let everyone know(^^)v
Well, that's pretty definitive -- he'll decide after the NPB season is over, which won't be for a few weeks; their regular season hasn't ended yet, and his team will be in the playoffs starting next weekend.
If Darvish decides not to go through the posting system, he wouldn't be a complete free agent able to negotiate with any MLB team until 2014.