Track me!

It’s like NORAD, but with Yu Darvish instead of Santa. Play along with me, will you?

While we anxiously await to hear the winner of the Yu Darvish sweepstakes, we can keep tabs on who’s actually in the running, who’s eliminated, and who might be playing the role of #YuDarvishMysteryTeam on Twitter. Here’s what we know as of now:

Placed Bids/Said To Be In The Running
Toronto Blue Jays
New York Yankees
Texas Rangers
Chicago Cubs
Seattle Mariners

Did Not Place Bids/Said To Be Eliminated
Boston Red Sox
Miami Marlins
Oakland Athletics
San Francisco Giants
Baltimore Orioles
Tampa Bay Rays
New York Mets
Minnesota Twins
Cincinnati Reds
Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim

Status Uncertain
Philadelphia Phillies
Atlanta Braves
Washington Nationals
Detroit Tigers
Cleveland Indians
Chicago White Sox
Kansas City Royals
Pittsburgh Pirates
Houston Astros
St. Louis Cardinals
Milwaukee Brewers
Los Angeles Dodgers
San Diego Padres
Colorado Rockies
Arizona Diamondbacks

As we hear the statuses of teams regarding Darvish, this post will be continually updated. Keep checking in to see if you’re still in the running!

Hi, Mr. Darvish. We're excited to have you!

And he announced it himself on his blog, so you know it’s legit.

Everyone’s talking about it this morning. Yu Darvish is easily the best pitcher to appear in Japan in the past decade. His skill level is so much higher than everyone else around him that he’s pretty much unstoppable. It makes sense for him to want to test his abilities in the best baseball league in the world. But now there’s a bigger question: who gets him?

Nippon Professional Baseball has a posting system. If you’re not quite familiar with how that works, it’s basically like this: the Nippon Ham Fighters make Darvish available to MLB. Teams interested in Darvish place bids. After four days, the team with the highest bid wins contract negotiation rights with Darvish for thirty days and hopes for the best.

I’m off to go and win the lottery now so I can then throw all of the money at Darvish and easily nail the high bid.

In all seriousness, several teams have shown interest so far, including the Rangers and Blue Jays. The Yankees have, as well, but they have the money to show interest in pretty much anybody. I’ve heard rumors about the Nationals over the past few weeks, too.

Of course, I wouldn’t be surprised at all if the Marlins put in a bid since they’re trying to sign everybody right now. But I doubt they’ll be major players on this one since they’ve thrown a significant amount of money around elsewhere already.

Can’t get enough Darvish news? Here are a bunch of sites where articles have been posted:

• Boston Herald
• MLB Trade Rumors
• FOX Sports
• Washington Post

Eat your fill of Darvish news for breakfast and enjoy! Hopefully your team’s the big winner in a few days.

If you want up to the minute Yu Darvish news, you can follow Steph on Twitter at @1863_project, where she will be likely tweeting about him constantly for the next several days.