There’s a report from a Japanese paper that, as of last night, Yu Darvish was en route from Japan to Texas. There’s a Google Translate translation of it via Baseball Time in Arlington.
While the Rangers and Darvish are currently in their 30-day window to negotiate a deal, there’s no sense, to the extent much sense can be gleaned from the translation, that a deal is close. Rather, Darvish is trying “to get valuable information before negotiations begin in earnest.”
But it certainly is a long flight just to get a sense of the place. And all indications are that Darvish will sign with the Rangers. So perhaps there will be a press conference while he’s in town.
