Yankees Scouting Japanese Pitcher Masahiro Tanaka

The New York Yankees and the Texas Rangers have both sent some of their top evaluators to scout the top Japanese pitching prospect Masahiro Tanaka recently. Tanaka is expected to be posted after this season by his team in the Japanese League, the Rakuten Golden Eagles. Tanaka is only 24 years old and is coming off of a 1.20 ERA season and pitching 158 innings so far this season.

Tanaka has a nice pitchers frame with his 6'2" and 205 lbs frame throwing his fastball comfortably in the low 90's, although hitting 96 at times, along with with a low 80's slider, and a high 80's splitter. Tanaka has easily been the best pitcher in the Japanese League for a couple years now so the interest should be extremely high for Mr. Tanaka.

The Major League Baseball Association has been discussing changes to the posting system with the NPB with the possibility of placing a hard cap on the posting fees but nothing is final yet. Tanaka may be the last pitcher for teams to go all out on and take a chance on so that may increase the bidding considerably.  Tanaka is being projected as a #2 starter that can contribute now in the major leagues although he does not pencil in better than, or as good as say a Yu Darvish.

The Yankees need arms, especially young and cheap ones, and Tanaka may fit that mold since the posting fee does not count against the luxury tax. With the Yankees possibly losing Hiroki Kuroda, Andy Pettitte, and Phil Hughes I think they kind of have to go all out on Tanaka. No one guy in the system has given us the feeling that we will not miss one of those three guys so Tanaka may be the answer, let's hope.