Natanaka, recently of the Tokyo Giants, nacks himself cold for the second time this week.

Maybe in Japan that's actually better than catching the ball.

Personally, I think he's just trying to get out of the lineup.

Good morning and welcome to episode 370 of Effectively Wild, the Daily Podcast from Baseball

Perspectus. I am Ben Lindbergh, joined by Sam Miller.

So today we're going to talk about the news that we have been foreshadowing and expecting

to happen for some time. It did happen today. The Dodgers signed Sean Figgins.

I actually knew that joke was coming as soon as I got started talking.

Yeah, I got you.

The Yankees signed Masahiro Tanaka to a large contract, which we knew it would be, but I don't

think we knew that it would be quite this large. It is seven years and 155 million technically,

I suppose, although much as there was with the Clayton Kursha contract that we talked about

last year, there is an opt out clause, which will allow him to opt out after his fourth season.

Of course, there's the 20 million dollar posting fee on top of that, and there is the money

that the Yankees will have to pay above the 155 because they'll have to pay more on every contract

because they'll be over the luxury tax threshold. I don't know.

I want to mention the cost of all those limo trips for his wife from Japan to New York. I don't

know how they're going to figure those out. Call back to yesterday, Sean. Yeah. His wife, I guess,

was okay with coming to New York. It turns out. It's a lot of money. I don't know exactly what the

amount would work out to if you added in all those other factors. You also figured that if they

were willing to pay him this much per season over that many seasons and also give him the opt out

clause, as we discussed last year, the opt out clause theoretically should favor the player, not the

...