The biggest name this free agency period isn't Barry Zito, or Alfonso Soriano, or for that matter, Barry Bonds. The name that's creating the most buzz this off-season is Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka.

For those unfamiliar with what is called the "posting" process, Matsuzaka's Japanese club, the Seibu Lions, receives sealed bids from prospective MLB clubs with interest in him. With the bids "blind," the highest bidder wins the right to negotiate with the Lions for Matsuzaka's services. In this instance, the posting fee may be as high as $30 million. The current figure being floated is $21-$22 million. Remember, this figure simply allows a club to negotiate for Matsuzaka. With his agent being Scott Boras, there is the possibility that on top of the posting fee, Matsuzaka might fetch a five-year, $75 million deal.

Against this backdrop has been speculation that there is tampering occurring in the posting process by some of the clubs. Rumors are that three clubs may be involved in the tampering. The question remains, how is the tampering occurring?

As the US - Japanese Player Contract Agreement (PDF) reads (bolding mine):

Within four (4) business days of the posting of the availability of the Japanese Player by the U.S. Commissioner, any interested U.S. Major League Club must submit to the U.S. Commissioner a bid, composed of monetary consideration only, to be paid to the Japanese Club as consideration for the Japanese Club relinquishing its rights to the player in the event that the U.S. Major League Club reaches an agreement with the Japanese Player. No direct or indirect contact may be made between a U.S. Major League Club and the Japanese Club concerning a posted player and/or the amount of the bid to be submitted by a U.S. Major League Club. The U.S. Commissioner shall have the authority, pursuant to paragraph (13) below, to take action that he deems appropriate in the event he concludes that a contact prohibited by the preceding sentence has been made concerning a posted player.

So far, only one article has come out on this topic. Ed Price of the New Jersey Star-Ledger writes:

Sankei Sports quoted an unnamed Seibu executive making the charge, and he refused to identify the teams. "It is tampering, so I refused to meet them," the executive said.

While the bidding process is sealed, a team could offer inducements other than cash if Seibu agreed to accept only part of the bid, allowing the team to make a larger bid to secure the right to sign Matsuzaka.

MLB, which reportedly sent out a memo to teams to warn them against tampering, said it is aware of such rumors and takes what safeguards it can against circumventing the system. And major-league teams would probably be eager to turn each other in if they had inklings of improprieties, which apparently has not happened in this case.

The Yankees, Mets, Red Sox, Cubs and Rangers are interested in Matsuzaka. The Mariners dropped out of the running, as reported by the AP:

Matsuzaka's potential double price tag proved too princely a sum for Seattle — even for Japanese billionaire Hiroshi Yamauchi. The Nintendo company mogul and former Mariners owner sold his shares of the team two years ago but remains its chief to whom Mariners CEO Howard Lincoln reports regularly.

Seattle has three holes in its starting rotation for next season and is also seeking a power-hitting corner outfielder this winter.

"Mr. Yamauchi has decided that the Mariners will not be participating in the bid process, a decision with which our baseball department concurs," Bavasi said.

"We will continue to pursue other ways other ways to improve the team, specifically our pitching."

It will be interesting to see if there is any validity to the speculation of tampering. This news is being heard by more than one source, so it will be interesting to see how this plays out, if indeed, tampering has occurred. One rumor is that the bids have not been sealed -- that some clubs are aware of what others are bidding. If that were the case, this will turn into a much larger story.

Maury Brown is the editor of The Biz of Baseball and an author for Baseball Prospectus. He can be contacted here.

MLB is skillful at luring the Latino demographic into MLB as of late, but the percentage of African Americans in the stands continues to decline. At one point, African Americans made up a large portion of the MLB fan base, but that has been slowly deteriorating.

As reported by BusinessWeek:

What makes MLB's skillful wooing of Latino fans so fascinating is how starkly it differs from the sport's failed efforts to engage African Americans. Once blacks were among MLB's most die-hard fans, as MLB commissioner Bud Selig is fond of recalling. Selig revels in a childhood memory of sitting with his friend Herb Kohl (now a Democratic Senator from Wisconsin) at Chicago's Wrigley Field in May, 1947. "As I looked around I remember saying: 'My God, we're the only white people in the upper deck,"' Selig says.

Nearly 60 years later, blacks are fast vanishing from big-league seats -- and big-league fields. Black players held just 9% of roster spots in 2005, down from 18% in 1991. It's trickier to track black fans, because MLB doesn't keep count, but Scarborough Sports Marketing, based in New York, puts African American turnout at MLB games at 8% of total attendance. That's puny considering that blacks constitute 13% of the U.S. population and that more than a third of MLB teams are located in metro areas where blacks make up 25% or more of residents, according to 2000 U.S. Census data.

This tale of two minorities partly reflects cultural forces that MLB couldn't have anticipated. In black communities, baseball fell victim to "the perfect storm," says MLB Executive Vice-President Jimmie Lee Solomon. He cites the shrinking number of baseball diamonds in inner cities over several decades and the rise in popularity of football and basketball, which youths see as easier stepping stones to college scholarships and pro careers -- partly because baseball requires a long apprenticeship in the minor leagues.

The article goes on to say that "Latino nations make up 13% of big-league attendance, according to Scarborough. And they're not just cheering at ballparks: The number of Latinos who watch baseball or listen on the radio is up about 15% since 2001."

The article then goes on to mention the decline of African Americans in MLB. For example, the White Sox, who do track the number of minorities that come through the turnstiles, and how at one time boasted a solid African American fan base, can now "say only a mere 4.5% of fans coming through the turnstiles are black -- in a city with an African American population of 37%."

(BusinessWeek ) 

Some may recall that there was conversation around the Florida Marlins possibly relocating to San Antonio earlier this year. As far flung as that sounded, what wasn't heard of was a conversation about the Marlins moving to Las Vegas. The Marlins said they were informed by MLB to not investigate the market as a possible relocation city, and yesterday that was confirmed in an interview with Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman. In the article by Ian Thomson that covers the NBA, Goodman was asked about the relocation effort. As reported:

"It died. I spoke to (baseball commissioner Bud) Selig because the Marlins had come out to see me and I wanted to pursue that. They called me and they said that Selig didn't want them talking to me. I called (the commissioner's office) up and verified that, and I wasn't about to make an enemy. I've had (NFL commissioner Paul) Tagliabue that I've had to contend with, so I didn't want to make an enemy out of Selig too.''

(SI.com)