Masahiro Tanka has signed with the Yankees.  Now that we know where he will be doing his pitching, it is time to look at what we can expect from a fantasy perspective for 2014.  There are two major exercises I undertook to project Tanaka.  First was to take a look at Dan Haren‘s numbers as a 25, 26, and 27 year old.  The reason I pulled up Haren’s numbers is because his pitch arsenal most reflects Tanaka’s.

Dan Haren
Year	Age	W	ERA	IP	SO	WHIP
2006	25	14	4.12	223	176	1.206
2007	26	15	3.07	222.2	192	1.208
2008	27	16	3.33	216	206	1.13

The second undertaking was to analyze Tanaka’s stats from Japan.  In order to do this I pulled up Yu Darvish‘s last two years in Japan and compared them to his first two yeas with the Rangers.  I found that Darvish’s wins, innings pitched, and strike out numbers were fairly similar between leagues.  His average ERA was 2.09x higher than his average ERA in Japan, and his average WHIP was 1.27x higher than his average whip in Japan.

Darvish in Japan	W	ERA	IP	SO	WHIP
10 & ’11 AVG	15	1.61	217	249	0.92
Darvish in MLB	W	ERA	IP	SO	WHIP
12 & ’13 AVG	15	3.37	200	249	1.18
		2.09x			1.28x

If we apply these adjustments to Tanaka’s stats over the last 3 years this is what his MLB projection would look like.

Tanaka in Japan	W	ERA	IP	SO	WHIP
11 ’12 ’13 AVG	18	1.47	204	198	0.95
Tanaka MLB Projection	W	ERA	IP	SO	WHIP
	17	3.07	200	197	1.21

“Converting” his stats in Japan to the MLB ends up looking fairly similar to Haren’s numbers as a 25-27 year old.  This isn’t an exact science of course, but if Tanaka can get somewhere around these numbers, he should be valuable on any fantasy roster.