 Our David Kohn echoes the sentiments of many fans who are grateful for all Masahiro Tanaka did as a Yankee. On Thursday morning, as Tanaka announced he is returning to his native Japan, the Yankees thanked him in a Twitter post for seven years filled with memories. Man, the Yankees bats great pitchers over the years. So if I throw the name Masahiro Tanaka at you, I would say where does he fit in that pantheon of great pitchers? Well, I don't know if he's right at the top, but I think what you can, the greatest compliment you can give any teammate is that you knew exactly what you were going to get from him every time he took the baseball. Now he might not have won every game. He might have had some bumps in the road, but you knew he was going to be prepared. You knew he was going to throw strikes. You knew he was going to throw the split, maybe slider, maybe more than the fastball. But I think the one thing after seven years, we saw his personality come out. And we saw how much fun his teammates were having with Tanaka. Maybe we didn't see that at the beginning of that contract, Jack. But at the end, I think you can say he maybe not outperformed the contract, but he definitely lived up to the expectations of it. I agree. Very popular in the clubhouse. And as far as the contract goes, you signed a player to a seven year, $155 million deal. You hope by the end of that, that you will be able to say this was a wise investment. And I think the Yankees can. I actually think he was underrated. You look at those ranks since 2014 in the American League, and he's in the top 10 in all of those statistics. And what I loved about him and why I think Flash would have loved catching him, he pitched away from his fastball in an era where it's all about velocity and who's throwing 100 today that didn't throw 100 yesterday. Here was Tanaka trying to get you to swing at his splitter or offer at his slider. He didn't want to throw his fastball. He threw it about a third of the time. He was a true artist on the mound. Yeah, I think of the postseason performances and on Jack's point, having command of all of his pitches. There are a lot of guys that maybe have command of two or three, but not what he was able to do. Yeah, and I mentioned Mike Musina's name before and he reminds me a little bit of that as well, that what do I have in the bullpen tonight and what am I going to take that on the mound for me? Is it going to be the split that might be a big pitch? Or maybe the slider that we saw got a lot better at the end of his Yankee career than it was at the beginning. You bring up the postseason and I'm going to go back to this again as a teammate. All of those guys in that clubhouse when there was a big moment during the postseason, they knew Tanaka was not going to be overwhelmed by that moment. Might not have won that game, but he wasn't going to be overwhelmed. That's a great compliment. Let's talk about his comfort level. The longer he was in New York, a couple of quick stories I have to tell. So he wore number 19 with the Yankees. In Japan, number 18 is the revered number for pitchers. That's your ace. That's your number one guy. When Didi Gregorius left the Yankees, I went up to Tanaka with an 18 on my notebook and I basically said, is this the number you might want to switch to? And in perfect English, he said to me, I'm sticking with 19. And then the other thing was I asked him once about tipping pitches and he said, yes, back in Japan, I had tipped pitches. And some of my teammates told me what I was doing and he said it was several years ago before he came to the Yankees. And when I asked him to share that information with me, he said, no, I'm not going to tell you what it was. He was still being protective and secretive of what he was trying to do as a pitcher.