Brian Cashman has acknowledged that the New York Yankees have concerns over Masahiro Tanaka's workload in Japan.
The Yankees signed Tanaka to a seven-year, $155 million contract on Wednesday.
"You always have concerns," Tanaka said. "That's always something you can't ignore or deny. But, I think that as you can see clearly by the competitive bidding on him as a free agent, with his age, talent, the scouting assessments on him, and the pitching market the way it is, it's certainly something that we're still willing to take the risk by acknowledging, yeah, there's a workload there."
The Rakuten Golden Eagles allowed Tanaka to throw a 160-pitch complete game in the Japanese championship series before throwing 15 pitches in relief the next day.