Masahiro Tanaka Injury Should Be Last Straw for MLB GM’s.

By:  Mike Lindsley

The Yankees were dumb enough to do it.  The Dodgers were dumb enough years ago.  The Red Sox have done it.  Many teams have done it.  

Oh it looks fancy and great early doesn’t it?  It’s like being in a relationship in the early stages where you never fight and everything goes well.  You have fun with your partner day and night.  And then it gets really old, really quick after year one or two.  Boring.  Complacent.  Arguments over nothing.  Failure to communicate.  One side blames another for absolutely nothing.  And then boom.  It breaks.  The relationship ends.  The gifts are returned.  Both sides move on.  

Masahiro Tanaka has broken.  The break-up is here.  

Hideo Nomo broke too.  So did Dice-K.  Every pitcher from the Far East breaks or is figured out by the BEST hitters in the world.  These aren’t Japanese hitters, no disrespect to that league.  This is Mike Trout and Miguel Cabrera and Giancarlo Stanton.  

Tanaka has a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his elbow.  This means that he can do one of two things.  Surgery now or surgery later.  The Yankees will wait on surgery and rehab the elbow for six weeks and see what happens.  The surgery is of course called the famed Tommy John Surgery.  

Why?  Just get it done now.  Get it done so Tanaka can be a nice add-on in July 2015 after the All-Star break.  Or do the Yanks really want to tax Tanaka this season to try and get Derek Jeter into the playoffs in the captain’s final season?

More to the point, general managers everywhere should end the nonsense.  Stop trusting these Japanese pitchers to come over here and be successful long term (gulp, maybe short term should have been said instead?).

Their season isn’t our season.  Their pitch count isn’t MLB’s pitch count.  Their workload and demand doesn’t match-up over here.  Certain pitches are encouraged in Japan, here they are discouraged.  Want a prime example?  The splitter.  Yup, Masahiro Tanaka’s go-to pitch for strikeouts.  The pitch that pitching coaches and general managers stateside have cringed at over the years and have recommended be limited or removed altogether because it puts too much wear and tear on the arm. 

Pitchers are babied here because of the money (see:  Stephen Strasburg) and perhaps they should pitch more.  Maybe the pitch count should be removed.  Maybe this goes back to Little League and there should be pitch counts for kids growing through their baseball lives and then no pitch counts as they get stronger in college and beyond.

No matter how you look at it, one thing is for sure.  This Far East to Major League Baseball pitching ride is as rough and unstable and idiotic as humanly possible. 

Masahiro Tanaka is just the latest example. 

And if any Major League Baseball front office executive has a brain, Tanaka should be the last.