Contract Crowdsourcing: Masahiro Tanaka

Since it’s Masahiro Tanaka day here at FanGraphs — Tony and I both wrote about him this morning — and because I find our reader’s expectations of contract prices to be endlessly fascinating, let’s go ahead and break out the Contract Crowdsourcing series again for MLB’s newest sort-of-free-agent.

This won’t be an exactly apples to apples comparison to the other 47 crowdsourced free agent contracts you guys already did, since we now have information about the market rate for players this winter and how teams are reacting to having more money than ever before, but it should still be a fun exercise. As usual, the form is below, though because I made this one, it won’t be as pretty as the ones Carson created a few months ago. As my wife will tell you, I’m more function over design, so it’s just a plain and simple two step form. We’ll collect a representative sample of the readership, and then I’ll publish the results either later this afternoon or tomorrow morning.

Two simple questions: how many years will Tanaka sign for, and what will the AAV of his salary be in those years? Note that because we know that the posting fee is going to be $20 million, there’s no need to forecast that, so you should only include the salary Tanaka will receive, and then his total cost will be the forecast years and dollars plus $20 million. But don’t include the $20 million. Really. Don’t do it. Just the AAV of what he’ll receive. Got it? Okay, go.