Larry Stone has an excellent article for the Seattle Times outlining the process for Daisuke Matsuzaka. He mentions two baseball sources who indicated that the Mariners will make just a token bid for the coveted hurler. To me this info only cements the Yankees’ status as the frontrunner.
Instead, Stone mentions that Bill Bavasi might focus his money to acquire Jason Schmidt or Barry Zito.
It’s expected that Seibu will post Matsuzaka in the first or second week of November. After that teams will have four days to submit bids. MLB will notify Seibu of the winning bid amount but not the team. If the bid is accepted, a contract must be reached within 30 days.
