Yankees Will Not Stop Tanaka From Participating in World Baseball Classic

The New York Yankees will not attempt to stop ace Masahiro Tanaka from pitching for his native Japan in the upcoming World Baseball Classic.

Fans of the New York Yankees are understandably gun-shy about their stars participating in the World Baseball Classic. In the 2013 series, Mark Teixeira suffered a wrist injury that he recently told Ken Rosenthal of Fox Sports, “knocked [him] out for two years,” and, in hindsight, may have been the beginning of the end for his abbreviated career.

It makes sense then that no one is thrilled with the news that the team’s best player in 2016, Yankees staff ace Masahiro Tanaka, will be participating in the tournament next spring before the start of the 2017 regular season.

Tanaka put together his first full, healthy season since coming over to the United States this year, making 31 starts and pitching 199.2 frames. His 3.07 ERA was good for third among qualified American League starters and he was the third most valuable pitcher in the AL according to Baseball-Reference’s wins above replacement metric with 5.4 WAR.

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Still, there are definitely reasons to be concerned about Tanaka’s durability going forward. He’s still pitching with a partial tear in his UCL that will almost certainly require TJ surgery in the next few seasons. He was also held out of his final two turns through the rotation after suffering a minor forearm sprain, although both he and team officials agreed the pitcher was healthy enough to make his last start of the season if the Yankees had not been eliminated from postseason contention.

Tanaka has seen significant increases in his workload each of the last few years, from 136.1 IP in 2014, to 154 IP in 2015, to 199.2 IP in 2016. While an increase of 40-50 innings is generally considered safe, the partial tear in his elbow ligament means Tanaka is not your typical case. Any unnecessary wear on his elbow should definitely be avoided, and the WBC certainly qualifies as unnecessary in my view.

In his annual end-of-season press conference, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman said there was basically nothing the team can do if Tanaka wants to participate:

"I don’t think we have say in that … Even though he felt healthy and looked fine and all that stuff, we made the right choice in saying you know what, see you in the spring, whether it’s going to be in Tampa or in the WBC."

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The 27-year-old righty has pitched for the Japanese national team in the last two World Baseball Classic tournaments, in 2009 and 2013. He was a key member of the 2009 championship club that defeated South Korea 5-3 in the finals that year.