Appreciating Masahiro Tanaka’s dominance so far
By Hayden Kane
When the New York Yankees take the field against the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday night, sensational starting pitcher Masahiro Tanaka will be looking to extend his perfect win-loss record to 7-0 on the season. That will garner much of the focus in how the game is covered, especially considering that Tanaka has not registered a loss in professional baseball (Japan included) since 2012.
Tanaka is 6-0 with a 2.17 ERA so far in the big leagues. Wins and losses only begin to tell the story of Tanaka’s dominance, however. That is not to diminish how impressive his undefeated streak is; even with the fickle nature of pitcher wins, there is no question that a record like that reflects true dominance. Rather, the statistics that will be considered here only enhance the story of how good Tanaka has been since joining the Yankees as he goes for his seventh win against the Cubs.
Strikeout and Walk rates
It sounds simple, but much of Tanaka’s success has resulted from the fact that he strikes out a bunch of hitters and almost never issues walks. He is in the top 10 in all of baseball in K/9 (10.24) and BB/9 (1.09). Tanaka is striking out better than a hitter an inning and he is barely issuing one walk per game. Those are video game numbers. As Dave Cameron notes in his column this morning on FanGraphs, that puts Tanaka’s strikeout rate 26% better than his walk rate, a remarkable difference that is second to only the now-injured Jose Fernandez in all of baseball.
Tanaka’s Splitter
Tanaka is not the first pitcher to have a famous pitch accompany his arrival in the U.S. Daisuke Matsuzaka, for example, was rumored to have a dominant pitch with his “gyro ball,” though those stories proved to largely be exaggerated and even a little bit silly.
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We heard tales of Tanaka’s splitter from the opening moments of free agency. We have seen enough now to know that this pitch is the real deal, with some impressive statistics to back up that observation.
What first grabs your attention is the frequency with which he throws it: so far Tanaka has thrown the splitter 23.1% of the time (stats from TexasLeaguers.com). Hitters swing at the pitch 63.1% of the time and whiff a downright staggering 31.3% of the time. In short: hitters do not recognize the pitch, they almost always swing at it, and a lot of times they miss it. Combined with the rest of his impressive arsenal of pitches, that gives you an idea of how Tanaka is striking out so many hitters.
Masahiro Tanaka will not go undefeated over the course of an MLB season, but there are plenty of other signs that he is for real and will be a fixture at the top of the Yankees rotation for the foreseeable future.