Masahiro Tanaka Stats and Scouting Report, Why the Cubs are Interested

In Commentary And Analysis, News And Rumors by dmick8910 Comments

20131026-202412.jpgMasahiro Tanaka is among the leaders in who the OV crowd predicts the Cubs will sign and not too surprisingly, we've already learned they are interested. According to Phil Rogers, Tanaka will be the Cubs top priority this offseason. There's good reason for that, but I wanted to compare him to some other Japanese pitchers, as well as taking a look at his scouting report.

While MLB and Nippon Proffesional Baseball (NPB) have begun negotiations that would alter the posting system, no changes have yet been made. It seems a late date at this point for any changes to affect this year's posting system, but keep an eye out for it. 

Masahiro Tanaka turns 25 years old in November and he stands 6-2 and weighs 205 pounds. His fastball sits in the low 90s and he can touch 96. Some scouts have said the ball comes in on a flat plane and doesn't seem as though it's as good as you'd expect. He has two plus offspeed offerings in a very good splitter that rates as a 70 on the 20-80 scale and a plus slider. He also throws a curve

He's shown good command and has struckout a lot of batters in Japan. Only Yu Darvish has been the same age at the time of posting. 

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Thanks to some help from GW, I came up with the following list of players to compare him to: Yu Darvish, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Hiroki Kuroda, Kei Igawa, Colby Lewis and Hisashi Iwakuma. 

Before I do that, I want to point out that there has been a lot of press about the ball being juiced in 2013. The league even admitted as much and offense is way up this year. It's one thing to consider when looking at what Tanaka has done this season.  

However, not everyone agrees with that despite the commissioner's resignation. His argument is that the ball was dead in 2011 and 2012 and returned to normal in 2013. It would take more work than I'm interested in to figure out who is correct. It was just something that should be pointed out. 

Below are Tanaka's stats. 

Masahiro Tanaka Stats
Year Age G GS IP H HR BB K ERA BB/9 K/9 K/BB
2007 18 28 28 186.3 183 17 68 196 3.82 3.3 9.5 2.9
2008 19 25 24 172.7 171 9 54 159 3.49 2.8 8.3 2.9
2009 20 25 24 189.7 170 13 43 171 2.33 2.0 8.1 4.0
2010 21 20 20 155.0 159 9 32 119 2.50 1.9 6.9 3.7
2011 22 27 27 226.3 171 8 27 241 1.27 1.1 9.6 8.9
2012 23 22 22 173.0 160 4 19 169 1.87 1.0 8.8 8.9
2013 24 23 23 181.0 142 6 27 155 1.24 1.3 7.7 5.7
Totals   170 168 1284.0 1156 66 270 1210 2.32 1.9 8.5 4.5

Those are some impressive numbers. Especially the last three years. Clay Davenport provides translations to these stats and they are below.

Masahiro Tanaka DT Stats
Year Age G GS IP H HR BB K NERA BB/9 K/9 K/BB
2007 18 28 28 185.0 190 24 87 152 5.23 4.2 7.4 1.7
2008 19 25 24 169.7 183 14 67 120 4.79 3.6 6.4 1.8
2009 20 25 24 188.0 186 18 49 126 3.73 2.3 6.0 2.6
2010 21 20 20 152.7 173 14 39 84 4.32 2.3 5.0 2.2
2011 22 27 27 218.0 203 21 42 184 3.18 1.7 7.6 4.4
2012 23 22 22 174.0 177 12 26 141 3.52 1.3 7.3 5.4
2013 24 23 23 178.3 161 13 32 121 2.76 1.6 6.1 3.8
Totals   170 168 1265.7 1273 116 342 928   2.4 6.6 2.7

His age 22-24 season would match up against any pitcher in MLB if those translations are accurate. Not just any young pitcher, but any pitcher in baseball. He wouldn't have the strikeout rate that others have, but his fantastic control would still make him a very good pitcher.

If the ball was juiced in 2013, those are ridiculously impressive. If the ball was deadened in 2011 and 2012, they're not nearly as good as they appear to be. I would assume whoever is going to be targeting Japanese talent will have looked into this issue and feel confident they have an answer. Whichever it is, it's important information to know. 

So how do they compare to the others? I wanted to look at 3-year averages, or in the case of Colby Lewis, a 2-year average (he only played 2 years in Japan). This will tell us how they performed, on average, over the three previous seasons before making the jump to MLB. 

NPB Stats
Player Age G GS IP H HR BB K ERA BB/9 K/9 K/BB
Masahiro Tanaka 22-24 24 24 193.4 158 6 24 188 1.46 1.1 8.7 7.9
Daisuke Matsuzaka 23-25 25 24 182.4 146 11 42 184 2.44 2.1 9.0 4.5
Kei Igawa 24-26 28 28 192.9 191 22 57 184 3.46 2.7 8.5 3.2
Colby Lewis 28-29 28 27 177.2 154 13 23 185 2.82 1.2 9.4 8.3
Yu Darvish 22-24 26 25 205.3 144 6 43 222 1.65 1.9 9.6 5.4
Hiroki Kuroda 30-32 27 26 193.9 176 16 35 144 2.86 1.6 6.7 4.6
Hisashi Iwakuma 28-30 23 23 163.0 156 11 33 121 2.83 1.8 6.7 3.9

And here are their translated stats.

DT Stats
Player Age G GS IP H HR BB K NERA BB/9 K/9 K/BB
Masahiro Tanaka 22-24 24 24 190.1 180 15 33 149 3.15 1.6 7.0 4.5
Daisuke Matsuzaka 23-25 25 24 178.2 159 15 49 141 3.52 2.5 7.0 2.9
Kei Igawa 24-26 28 28 185.1 204 24 72 121 5.33 3.5 5.8 1.7
Colby Lewis 28-29 28 27 172.7 173 18 38 136 4.19 2.0 7.1 3.6
Yu Darvish 22-24 26 25 200.8 171 13 54 169 3.02 2.4 7.5 3.1
Hiroki Kuroda 30-32 27 26 190.9 173 16 35 143 4.24 1.7 6.7 4.5
Hisashi Iwakuma 28-30 23 23 160.1 172 17 40 87 4.47 2.3 4.9 2.2

Darvish's 3-year average isn't greatly affected by the controversy surrounding the dead/juiced ball in Japan. Neither is Iwakuma's. Tanaka's potentially is. None of the others pitched in those years so are unaffected. 

Tanaka's numbers stack up well against Yu Darvish who the Rangers paid $56 million to after a $51.7 million posting fee. That's probably a good ballpark as to what it will take to get Tanaka. It could be a bit more if the CBA has affected free agent salaries as much as some think. I don't have an opinion on that matter yet. 

Why are the Cubs interested? Because he's sit either at the top of the rotation or slot nicely behind Jeff Samardzija. If the posting fee doesn't get out of hand, it's a nice investment. He's right in his prime and that's the age group the Cubs are targeting long-term.

He's a good pitcher and probably the best pitcher on the market (assuming he is available to teams in the US). 

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  1. Omar Little

    dmick89 wrote:

    @ Myles:
    GW and I were talking about the livelier… Ellsbury and Choo…fuck. I want…either Daisuke or Darvish…if you’re…getting involved…that high.

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  3. Myles

    Where else can the Cubs get a #2 starter, if not via this route? There are no SP of Tanaka’s caliber on the FA market (depending on what you feel about a guy like Garza or Ervin Santana), and neither of those guys are exactly young. It seems like I’m the only guy who would trade Baez for Price, and even then you have to extend him to big-time money AND give up prospects (multiple) for the opportunity. There just aren’t that many ways to acquire top-flight pitching. If we assume Kershaw is locked up long-term (an easy assumption to make), here’s the notable pitchers of the 2015 class (the one AFTER this one, which is headed by such luminaries as the 10,000 year old Hiroki Kuroda):

    Chad Billingsley (if his 14MM option is declined, which will only happen if the bad things happen to him)
    Homer Bailey
    Josh Beckett
    Wei-Yin Chen
    Johnny Cueto (not likely, has a 10MM team option)
    Yovani Gallardo (not likely, has a 13MM team option that will only not be exercised if he’s garbage)
    Hisashi Iwakuma (not likely, has a 7MM team option) (what a steal contract THAT was)
    Justin Masterson (reliever)
    Brandon McCarthy
    Jake Peavy
    Max Scherzer (who might be extended, but this might be the best chance)

    A better group than 2014, but not by much. You can eliminate Billingsley, Cueto and Iwakuma relatively safely, and I’d also be surprised if Scherzer made it to market (though it’s certainly possible).

    Let’s be honest; the Cubs need MULTIPLE starting pitchers to be competitive. I think you can count on Shark to be a #3-ish type, along with Wood (who I’m slightly less confident in) and Jackson (who I’m even LESS confident in). Anyone else is just a gamble (including but not limited to: Arrieta, Grimm, Hendricks, Negrin, Rusin, Raley, Baker, Cabrera, Black). Even the very best Cubs pitching prospects (Pierce Johnson, Paul Blackburn, C.J. Edwards, Rob Zastryzny (did I spell that right?)) are all a few years away if they ever get here (which odds are, they don’t, that’s the name of the game).

    The offense is fairly close to taking care of itself (just a simple regression to the mean in BABIP and RISP avg will give the Cubs a boost (also, in whatever the fuck “clutch” is on fangraphs, the Cubs are 29th, ahead of only the Pirates). As evidenced by my hope they only spend money on Eric Chavez and Geovany Soto, I think the offense is close to being passable (and long-term upgrades only make sense in certain places; the places that are too expensive to upgrade at (when the opportunity cost is upgrading pitching). I really hope the Cubs make a play at SOME pitching this offseason, or I’m going to go crazy watching another piss-poor Cubs team.

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  5. JonKneeV

    I think if the Cubs sign both Tanaka and one of Ellsbury/Choo and we get 2 of the top prospects to graduate and contribute by June, we will have a fighting chance and at least be relevant come August.

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  9. Author
    dmick89

    @ Myles:
    The Cubs need runs in the way of runs produced. This is runs scored or runs prevented. I’d like to have a great pitching staff as much as the next guy, but when that’s not feasible, you build a better team by adding more runs scored.

    I don’t really want to spend $100 million or more to get a number 2 starter (that’s what the scouts seem to think). I also don’t really want to spend $120 million to sign a guy like Ellbsury, but I’ll take that bet over Tanaka.

    If the Cubs are going to spend money, and that’s a big if, I think you take the safer bets. Ellsbury and Choo are available. If there’s enough left over, see if you can get this guy. If not, add a couple decent starters and call it quits.

    I’ll trade Baez. I’m just not trading him for Price and the huge contract you’d almost be forced to give him. I’d be more than willing to part with Almora for Price. If Price had another year of club control, I’d be more likely to consider Baez for Price. Might even say go for it.

    All that said, Tanaka would be a good investment unless the bidding goes way higher than I think it will. I’d even put a $52 million bid on this guy. I wouldn’t put more than that, but why not go a bit higher than Darvish and see if you can sign this guy?

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