In a rather surprising announcement, New York Yankees starting pitcher Masahiro Tanaka has been named to his second all-star game, replacing the injured Marcus Stroman. This is his first since 2014.
Tanaka, 30, has a 5-5 record with a 3.86 ERA over 105 innings. His season WAR is at 1.8 and his WHIP is at 1.18.
Let’s be honest here. A 3.86 ERA isn’t deserving of an all-star game. I love Tanaka in all, but he probably didn’t deserve it. I’m not sure he even thinks so. He said before Saturday’s game that “when you kind of look at your stats and things like that… that’s why I was surprised.”
A lot of Tanaka’s problem this year is consistency. He has eight starts with one run or less surrendered, and seven starts with four or more runs surrendered.
His last two starts haven’t been great and they really raised the ERA. He gave up six runs to Boston in less than an inning, and four runs to Tampa in 6 and 1/3 innings. His ERA was at 3.21 prior to his June 29th start against Boston.
Overall, I’m really happy for Masahiro, but he probably wasn’t good enough to deserve a nod for the game.