Yanks sold on splitting image
MANY ASPECTS of Masahiro Tanaka — what kind of teammate he is, if his fastball will fool majorleague hitters, whether he and his pop-star wife will become a couple about town — will reveal themselves slowly, as the Yankees’ newest prize experiences his first year in this country. But for now, here is what you need to know, courtesy of a scout who has watched Tanaka many times:
“He has the best splitter in the world.”
Well, then. That’s high praise, but the superiority of Tanaka’s split-fingered fastball is evident after a quick Google video search of “Tanaka” and “splitter,” and you don’t need to be a professional evaluator to see what the Yankees like.
Actually, “like” is not strong enough. The Yanks were so taken with Tanaka, after scouting him extensively since 2007, that they signed him on Wednesday to a seven-year, $155 million contract, according to two baseball officials with direct knowledge of the deal. In addition to that expenditure, Yankees must send a $20 million posting fee to Tanak a’s for mer team, the Rakuten Golden Eagles.
That combined amount — $175 million — is the most any team has ever spent on a free agent pitcher, and this for a guy who has never pitched in the major leagues. Yes, Tanaka was 24-0 for Rakuten last year, but this is not a move without risk; no foray into the unknown is guaranteed to work.
Ever since Hideo Nomo pioneered this type of migration by signing with the Los Angeles Dodgers in 1995, Japan has sent aces and busts — typical of any country producing baseball players, of course, but different because of the cost of Japanese stars.
Daisuke Matsuzaka, on whom the Boston Red Sox spent more than $100 million between posting fee and salary, has experienced a mixed career, never sustaining the success once predicted for him. More recently, Yu Darvish has served as a legitimate ace for the Texas Rangers and is one of the best pitchers in the league.
Add to all those contractions the unknown of how Tanaka’s heavy workload in Japan will impact him in future years; the 25-year-old threw 160 pitches once last year, then earned the save for his team the very next day.
The Yankees’ record in evaluating Japanese pitching talent is mixed. Hideki Irabu will forever be remembered as the guy George Steinbrenner referred to as a “fat pussy toad,” and Kei Igawa spent most of his U.S. years exiled in Scranton. Hiroki Kuroda, a successful signing, came over as a free agent after spending four years with the Dodgers. So what can we expect from Tanaka? The Yankees see hope for a model in their greatest Japanese success, even though he was a position player. During his seven years in New York, Hideki Matsui was extremely popular among teammates, and perfor med well under the extreme pressure that comes with arriving in New York as a high-profile signing. It was no coincidence that the Yanks asked Matsui to make a recruiting call to Tanaka, in whom they see similarities.
Still, because of a secretive negotiating process, the Yankees’ still do not have a strong firsthand sense of his character. Their scouts liked what they saw, and the Yanks sent an eight-person contingent to Los Angeles earlier this month for a meeting, where they did most of the talking. That’s about it, for now.
“I got no indications, no inkling,” of Tanaka’s intentions, said Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, so he was left to lean on his scouts for insights about personality. “There are a lot of variables that scouts can pick up on — how they compete on the field, how they interact with their teammates in good times and bad. You try to get as much info as you possibly can to fill in the blanks.”
Former Yankee Andruw Jones, Tanaka’s Golden Eagles teammate, provided more insight in a Tuesday interview with MLB Network’s Hot Stove show.
“He’s an awesome kid,” Jones said. “He likes to do things — they all get together. They order food. They play games in the clubhouse to see who’s going to pay for food, so he’s a very, very social kid. I don’t see him having a problem coming to the United States.”
From a pitching standpoint, Jones agreed with what scouts say, and what the numbers suggest. Tanaka has a superlative splitter,
is willing to use his two-seamer to pitch to contact, and seems in possession of what coaches call “pitchability,” meaning the smarts to handle different situations.
So he’s good. How good? Here’s Baseball America’s Ben Badler, providing a scouting report in a recent piece that compared Tanaka with Darvish — and heaped praise on the former, while selecting the latter as the better pitcher, in part because Tanaka has a slower, straighter fastball.
“Tanaka projects more as a No. 2,” Badler wrote. “That’s certainly not a knock on Tanaka — compare nearly anyone to Darvish, Verlander, Kershaw or Jose Fernandez and they won’t stack up well either. Tanaka should be one of the best pitchers in the major leagues this season, and there are some scouts who do prefer Tanaka to Darvish.”