Mashiro Tanaka entices the Yankees for reasons beyond a splitter that one veteran scout, not prone to hyperbole, called “the best I have ever seen” and a 2013 Japanese League regular season that was close to perfect.
Tanaka is 24, five weeks younger than Tampa Bay’s Chris Archer, who is in play for this year’s AL Rookie of the Year. The Yanks, annually drafting outside of the top 20, hardly ever get access to high-end players in this age range. Plus Tanaka offers other perks for the Yanks:
— He would be coming to the United States as a free agent, but unlike American free agents of this ilk, there would be no draft-pick compensation tied to signing him.
— He likely would receive a salary well below his value since he almost certainly will have to be posted, which probably will limit him to negotiate with just one team rather than have several bid him up. For example, Texas won the posting bid two offseasons ago for Yu Darvish at $51.7 million then paid Darvish just a six-year, $56.6 million contract.
The Yanks are trying to get under the $189 million luxury tax threshold for next year and posting fees — no matter how extravagant — don’t count toward the tax. Only the annual average value of the contract does, and the expectation is Tanaka’s will not be that different than the $9.43 million average of Darvish. Consider that Edwin Jackson — hardly an ace — makes $13 million annually.
— The Yanks are trying to re-energize their fan base and get their faithful excited about buying tickets again. And they believe there will be curiosity stirred to see a pitcher who just went 24-0 to help the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles win the Pacific League division title.
Of course, this all comes with warnings. First of all, the Yanks will not be bidding alone. The Angels, at least as desperate for pitching as the Yankees, are expected to be aggressive. So are the Dodgers, whose history of being bold with foreign free agents was rewarded again this year with Yasiel Puig and Hyun-jin Ryu.
The Red Sox, Rangers, Giants, Diamondbacks and Blue Jays also are expected to be involved.
In fact, multiple executives offered some version of this sentiment: In a sport already flush with cash, each team is about to get around $25 million more annually as part of the new national TV package. Yet, caps on the draft and young international amateurs limit how much can be spent in those arenas. Thus, clubs have money to spend and are looking for places to do so. And the success of players such as Darvish, Ryu, Puig and Aroldis Chapman have more and more franchises open-minded about allotting big dollars for true international free agents.
However, multiple executives also noted that News Corp. paid $2 billion to YES last year to purchase at least 49 percent of the network and that some of those dollars were redirected to the Yanks. Translation: The Yanks have a big pile of newfound money to use lavishly for a posting bid.
But should they? The Yanks were motivated by similar logic — that a posting fee was not taxable and the average annual salary would be tempered — when they signed Kei Igawa to a five-year, $20 million deal in November 2006 after winning his post at $26 million. Igawa was a bust. So were Yankees pitching imports Kats Maeda and Hideki Irabu.
With Irabu, the Yanks also were looking to tantalize their fan base, embracing all of the comparisons that Irabu was the Nolan Ryan or Roger Clemens of Japan.
It is difficult to translate success in Japan to what a player will be in the majors. Tanaka went 24-0 with a 1.28 ERA and hasn’t lost since August 2012. It is impressive. But consider the competition. The two most productive hitters on Tanaka’s Golden Eagles team were Andruw Jones and Casey McGehee — who were not even good enough to make the Yanks’ postseason roster last year. And before joining the Yankees, Igawa was a Japanese strikeout champ and MVP, and as a 34-year-old member of the Pacific League’s Orix Buffaloes in 2013, he went 3-3 with a 2.59 ERA in nine starts.
There are much softer spots to find outs in Japanese lineups than in America, plus Japanese starters have to make the adjustment from pitching every sixth day, in general, to every fifth.
Nevertheless, four of the best pitchers in the AL this year — Darvish, Hiroki Kuroda, Hisashi Iwakuma and Koji Uehara — are from Japan. And the majority opinion from a half-dozen scouts/executives who have seen Tanaka in person in Japan or as part of the World Baseball Classic is that he will be a very good-to-excellent pitcher in the States.
The consensus was his stuff is not as dynamic or varied as Darvish but that he is a better strike thrower and has some kinship with Kuroda.
“His stuff is good, maybe that of a No. 3-4 starter,” an NL personnel man said, “but it plays better, like Kuroda, because he commands the ball and knows what he is doing.”
The scout who called Tanaka’s split the best he has seen (“it comes out of his hand just like his fastball and drops incredibly late”) said the righty has three above-average pitches — split, fastball (90-94 mph) and slider — and expects his strong strikeout total in Japan (183 in 212 innings this year) will be even better in the States because making contact is more valued in Japan than here. The scout’s warning, echoed by others and obvious in videos of Tanaka, is that he wraps his arm behind him before delivering a pitch, which could put duress on his arm. However, he is 6-foot-2, 205 pounds, broad shouldered and is viewed as durable.
Plus, he is just 24.
“The premium you are buying here is age,” one executive said. “He is not 29, beat up more by all the throwing done in Japan. You get his prime.”
And the Yanks need a prime-time starter. Andy Pettitte has retired. Phil Hughes will leave in free agency. The Yanks will hope CC Sabathia’s delivery was fixed late in the season and he can rebound toward ace-hood. They would like Kuroda back for another year, but many in the organization believe he is leaning toward returning to Japan to finish his career. They want to think that the Ivan Nova of the second half is the real Ivan Nova and that David Phelps, Adam Warren, Vidal Nuno, Brett Marshall and David Huff offer depth.
But they need another high-end arm. And if they could land Tanaka, they could at least dream that Tanaka, Nova, Michael Pineda (2 1/2 months younger than Tanaka) and Manuel Banuelos (returning from Tommy John surgery) form the nucleus of a strong rotation moving forward.
“I could see the Yankees really stepping up because they have no prospects coming and their rotation is getting older or leaving to free agency,” a rival GM said.
Yet landing him has further complications. The posting agreement between MLB and Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB) has lapsed, and the sides are in the midst of negotiating a new one. No player was allowed to be posted before Nov. 1 anyway, so the sides are hoping to have something in place by then. But it is touchy.
MLB and the Players Association want far less paid in posting bids and instead to direct those dollars to players here. NPB, obviously, wants its teams well compensated when stars leave before they are free agents (it takes 10 years in Japan). There had been reports of letting the highest bids in the blind-bidding process negotiate with the player. Up until now, it had been just the winning bidder could negotiate.
The Yanks, for so many reasons, plan to try to make that their first win of 2014.