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For Masahiro Tanaka, the discovery of the splitter grip eventually spawned two splitter variations -- a tumbling one Tanaka throws for strikes early in the count, and a sharper offering he utilizes with two strikes.

(William Perlman/The Star-Ledger)

One spring day in 2010, Masahiro Tanaka grabbed a magazine at the center of the home clubhouse at Miyagi Baseball Stadium and leafed through it.

At the time, a 21-year-old Tanaka was in his fourth season with the Rakuten Golden Eagles of Nippon Professional Baseball (NPB), Japan’s premier league.

A national star since high school, he had dominated hitters the previous season and posted a 2.33 ERA over 189 2/3 innings. As expected, Tanaka had become one of the country’s elite pitchers.

But picking up that copy of Shukan Baseball, a popular Japanese weekly publication, helped trigger Tanaka’s transformation into a world phenomenon — and, eventually, a New York Yankee.

That week’s issue included an in-depth analysis of off-speed pitches from several standout pitchers around the 12-team league.

Brian Falkenborg, an American journeyman, had just completed his first season in Japan with the SoftBank Hawks. The right-hander posted a 1.74 ERA in 46 games as the club’s setup man. His version of a split-fingered pitch stood out in a league saturated with splitter-twirling hurlers and generated enough intrigue that Shukan Baseball included detailed descriptions and photographs of his grip.

Four years later, Falkenborg does not remember much about the feature. It had been arranged through the team, and his translator handled the communication. Now in his sixth season in Japan, Falkenborg still relies on his interpreter to communicate anything beyond a cordial greeting, so he didn’t even read the piece.

But Tanaka did.

Falkenborg’s is the grip Tanaka studied, immediately mimicked, and used during a game after just one bullpen session. The pitch was similar to a forkball already in his arsenal, but the ball was not placed as deep between his index and middle fingers.

The discovery spawned two variations of the splitter — a tumbling one Tanaka throws for strikes early in the count, and a sharper offering he utilizes with two strikes — as well as staggering success, global celebrity and extravagant riches.

Over the next three seasons, Tanaka did not finish with an ERA above 1.87. He won the Sawamura Award (Japan’s equivalent to the Cy Young) in 2011 and 2013, when he went 24-0 with a 1.27 ERA and led the Golden Eagles to the Japan Series title with what many in the industry believe is now the best splitter in the world.

This past winter, Tanaka became the latest Japanese star to be lured to the United States. Ultimately, the Yankees won over Tanaka with a dogged pursuit and seven-year, $155 million contract — the richest contract given to a Japanese player in major-league history.

And Tanaka has responded, with a 3-0 record and 35 strikeouts in 29 1/3 innings heading into tonight’s outing against the Angels.

Without Falkenborg, Tanaka will say, it could have been a different story.

"I probably would not be able to get that record last year in Japan," Tanaka said recently through his interpreter, Shingo Horie. "And I probably might not even be here."

THE WANDERER



The Baltimore Orioles drafted Falkenborg out of Redmond (Wash.) High School in the second round of the 1996 draft. In 1999, he debuted in the majors and had two relief appearances with the Orioles.

A nomadic career then commenced. After four years in the Orioles organization as a starter, he spent three with the Seattle Mariners, also as a starter, stalling in Triple A. He joined the Dodgers in 2004 and posted a 7.53 ERA over 14 1/3 innings in six major-league games out of the bullpen, his first major-league stint in five years.

That winter, the San Diego Padres signed Falkenborg and worked him out of the bullpen. To find sustained success as a reliever, Falkenborg figured he needed to learn another swing-and-miss pitch to complement his fastball and curveball.

Two years earlier, then-Mariners pitching coach Brian Price, currently the Reds manager, had suggested Falkenborg throw a splitter. Price concluded Falkenborg’s 6-foot-7 frame and over-the-top arm angle created the ideal downward plane for the pitch. But Falkenborg worried time spent mastering the pitch would diminish his chances of being a starter in the big leagues.

Just about out of options and convinced relieving was his best avenue to the majors, Falkenborg revisited learning the splitter.

A close friend, longtime major-league closer J.J. Putz, taught him a grip. Falkenborg "fooled around with it," but the pressure of annually competing for a spot on a major-league roster ultimately discouraged Falkenborg from consistently implementing it.

"The general rule in America when you’re in the bullpen," Falkenborg said during a recent telephone interview from Japan, "is you don’t get beat with your third-best pitch."

Ultimately, it did not matter. Falkenborg spent the next three seasons bouncing between organizations and shuttling between Triple A and the majors. After the 2008 season, he was a 30-year-old journeyman with 64 major-league appearances on his résumé.

He decided to go to Japan.

JAPAN'S PITCH



The splitter is thrown the same way as a standard fastball, but the ball is gripped between the index and middle fingers. The combination creates a tumbling path. The best splitters look like fastballs for most of their trajectory but plunge out of the strike zone at the last second.

In the 1980s, Roger Clemens, Jack Morris and Dave Stewart relied on the splitter, but its popularity dipped when major-league teams became wary of the strain it creates on the elbow.

Japan was different. While Americans choose the changeup or slider, Japanese pitchers, from high school through the pros, will throw splitters at several speeds, with varying movements in different counts.

In many ways, the splitter has become Japan’s pitch.

Hideo Nomo, the first successful Japanese import in the majors, made it his best pitch when he arrived in 1995. So did Kaz Sasaki (who arrived in 2000) and Shigetoshi Hasegawa (1997). Today, Red Sox closer Koji Uehara, Rangers ace Yu Darvish, and Yankees veteran Hiroki Kuroda carry the tradition.

Kuroda, 39, said he learned the splitter when he turned pro after college because he assessed his chances of succeeding were slim without an improved arsenal. He learned it from watching television and studying teammates and from coaches’ instructions.

After compiling ERAs of 4.40, 6.60, 6.78 and 4.31 in his first four seasons with the Hiroshima Carp, Kuroda established himself as one of NPB’s best starting pitchers and came to America in 2008 at the age of 33.

"In a sense, you can say it’s a specialized pitch in Japan," Kuroda said through his interpreter, Jiwon Bang. "But the reason behind it is there are obviously more pitchers that throw splitters in Japan than here."

Chris Leroux quickly discovered this cultural connection. When Leroux signed with the Yakult Swallows last April, coaches asked if he threw a splitter. He did not. The response was disregarded.

"They were like, ‘Well, you better learn one,’ " said Leroux, who was promoted yesterday to the Yankees from Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre.

So following his Japanese debut, Leroux learned how to throw the splitter during a bullpen session. Leroux estimated he threw around 85 pitches — standard procedure in Japan — and "was just toast."

In his second start, he felt an unsettling feeling in his arm and consequently began lowering his arm angle, which diminished the splitter’s effect.

His Japanese career lasted five starts. He posted a 9.00 ERA.

"They were paying me so much money that I was just like, ‘All right, I’ll throw it just to throw it and see how it goes,’" said Leroux, who signed a one-year, $550,000 contract with the Swallows. "I kept throwing the split just because everybody throws it."

Falkenborg’s forced assimilation was much more successful. When he arrived in Japan to join SoftBank, he was also asked what he threw. His list included fastball, curveball and splitter. In reality, he rarely threw his splitter, but that was irrelevant. The coaching staff wanted him to throw it, and often.

SoftBank’s catchers called for it constantly during spring training, and that pattern continued into the regular season. An initial level of uneasiness was replaced by comfort as Falkenborg threw more and more splitters.

"Before I knew it, I was a fastball-split pitcher with a curveball that was just a show pitch," Falkenborg said.

The combination produced startling results. Falkenborg followed his breakthrough season of 2009 with ERAs of 1.02, 1.42, 1.57, and 2.04 the next four years.

Throughout his time overseas, he has been among the highest-paid players in the league — a product of Japanese personnel executives valuing relievers more than their counterparts in Major League Baseball.

This past winter, the Rakuten Golden Eagles used $1.95 million of the $20 million fee the Yankees paid to negotiate with Tanaka to sign Falkenborg. He is now the team’s closer.

COMING TO AMERICA



Falkenborg recalls meeting Tanaka once during a 2009 All-Star Game. Language barriers limited their encounter to a meet-and-greet, but Falkenborg remembers a shy, quiet Tanaka.

The American witnessed Tanaka’s stardom intensify each season as a Pacific League rival. And Tanaka came out of his shell. He showed up on advertisements. He married a reality-television-star-turned singer. His starts became marquee events.

But he remained a mystery to Americans. The prevailing thought among talent evaluators was that Tanaka would become a frontline starter in the majors, but not an ace.

Still, there was a hysteria surrounding Tanaka’s recruitment and his arrival on a $195,000 chartered flight from Tokyo for a group of six, including his brown poodle named Haaru. A feverish press conference was held at Yankee Stadium to introduce Tanaka days before pitchers and catchers reported for spring training.

To quell expectations, Yankees general manager Brian Cashman went on the radio and declared the Yankees would be satisfied if Tanaka evolves into a No. 3 starter, despite the $155 million price tag.

Falkenborg is more confident. He raves about Tanaka’s ability and his competitiveness, and says Tanaka pitched more like an American in Japan than any other Japanese pitcher he had seen, which meant he attacked hitters.

"He’s going to have a great opportunity to be a very good pitcher," Falkenborg said. "Is he going to be a legitimate No. 1 starter? I don’t know. Those guys are very few and far between and it takes a special set of tools to be one of those guys.

"Do I believe he has the stuff to be a top of the rotation, frontline guy on a team that’s going to be in the playoffs season-in, season-out? Yes."

So far, Tanaka is surpassing the scouts’ projections. He has not thrown fewer than seven innings in any of his four starts. He boasts a slim 2.15 ERA and remarkable strikeout-to-walk rate of 35-to-2. And he has shown an ability to recover from costly mistakes.

It is early, but the $155 million the Yankees allocated for Tanaka appears inexpensive for a rotation now without Ivan Nova for the season due to Tommy John surgery. The Yankees may have Brian Falkenborg to thank.

"I think Tanaka’s giving me too much credit," Falkenborg insisted. "To me, if I was a position player and I had a certain model bat and I went in and showed it to Tanaka and he liked it, he’s still got to swing and hit with it.

"He basically took a pitch from my grip, but he had to go get it done."