Masahiro Tanaka is one of the most recognizable faces in Japanese baseball, but sightings of the star pitcher were few and far between in 2024.
He started only one top-team game for the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles — allowing four runs in five innings — and made five appearances for the farm team, throwing just 28 innings overall.
Tanaka spent the first several months of last year rehabbing in the minors after surgery to clean out his elbow late in 2023 and never regained his peak condition. But he had not looked like himself before the surgery, either, posting a 4.91 ERA in 139⅓ innings in 2023.
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