Right-hander Masahiro Tanaka will be introduced at a 1pm ET press conference at Yankee Stadium next Tuesday, the Yankees announced. It will be broadcast live on YES. Tanaka recently secured his visa (thanks to Senator Schumer) and the team wanted to hold a press conference in New York before everyone went down to Tampa for the start of Spring Training late next week.
In other news, Joel Sherman reports that Tanaka’s contract stipulates that he can not be sent to the minors without his permission. It’s not really a big deal but obviously we should all hope the Yankees don’t even have to think about sending Tanaka to the minors at some point. They’ve basically given him all the rights of a player with 6+ years of service time, which is the norm these days. Japanese veterans are treated as Major League veterans as a courtesy even though they are technically rookies.
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