In no more than 10 days, Masahiro Tanaka’s offseason-long odyssey will be over. By then, the coveted right-handed pitcher from Japan will have signed with an MLB team or, short of that, returned to the Rakuten Golden Eagles.
The deadline for Tanaka to sign with an MLB team is Jan. 24, according to Mike Axisa of CBS Sports, but beyond that, there’s still relatively little known about his dealings. Most recently, Tanaka ventured to the U.S. last week to meet with interested teams, but even that yielded only so much in the way of juicy reports.
So, for now, we’re left with a very long list of potential suitors, a few reports and good old fashioned intuition to make sense of where Tanaka might eventually end up. Here are some of the many teams that are reportedly in on Tanaka, and each one’s chances of coming away with him.