It may not yet be clear whether Matsuzaka was truly worth the investment made by the Sox, whose total bill for him was $103.1 million, including the $52 million in salary they are paying him over six seasons. But the financial windfall reaped by Seibu, which plays in this suburb 17 miles west of downtown Tokyo, hardly has offset the team's reversal of fortune in the 16 months since it elected to part ways with Japan's equivalent of Michael Jordan.
There have been material improvements from the posting money, which came to about $36 million after taxes. The team spent $13 million on a high-definition video scoreboard, an artificial playing surface, new restrooms, and padded outfield fences. Club officials said they intend to spend an additional $17 million on the construction of new field seats, a new lower concourse, and handicapped-accessible elevators.
But last season, Seibu, which had not finished lower than third in 25 years, finished fifth in the six-team Pacific League, the Lions' worst performance since the railway company took ownership of the team in 1979. The manager, former star catcher Tsutomo Ito, who had been with the club since 1984, resigned, saying he accepted responsibility for the team's poor showing.
But that may have been the least of Seibu's problems. Last spring, the team was caught in a bribery scandal, found to have made under-the-table payments to two amateur players, which led to revelations of a pattern of illegal payments to 170 amateur coaches and administrators that had been going on for years. The team was fined 30 million yen (more than $300,000) and forced to forfeit its top two choices in that June's amateur draft, the first time any team had been stripped of picks since the draft was instituted in 1965. The team's acting owner and president, Hidekazu Ota, was demoted to vice president.
The team's top slugger, first baseman Alex Cabrera, who led the league in home runs in 2006 and hit 27 more last season, was implicated as a steroid user in the Mitchell Report and left after the season as a free agent. The club denied that his alleged steroid use was a factor in not re-signing him.
