You may be wondering what all the fuss is about.

Why are major league teams salivating over Masahiro Tanaka? Why is one Japanese team frothing at the mouth? Why so much speculation, so many headlines, all the trans-Pacific negotiations over the posting system? If he goes, and it's still a big naraba, what will he go for?

Is Ma-Kun, as he is known in Japan, really worth it? The short answer is yes.

Imagine a charismatic 6-foot-2, 205-pound right-hander who just turned 25 and finished the regular season with a record of 24-0 and an ERA of 1.27. Actually, you don't have to imagine it because that is what Tanaka did before leading the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles to the first Japan Series championship in their nine-year history.

His control has been compared to that of Greg Maddux, his fastball to that of Roger Clemens and his split-finger to that of Koji Uehara. As for his stamina, try Grover Cleveland Alexander.

He not only won his second Eiji Sawamura Award as Japan's best pitcher but also the Pacific League MVP with all 233 first-place votes -- the first unanimous selection since 1965. In seven seasons with the Eagles, his ERA is 2.30 and his WHIP is 1.108.

When he saved the Eagles' Game 7 victory over the Yomiuri Giants in the Japan Series -- a day after throwing 160 pitches in his only 2013 loss -- he lifted up not only the 25,249 faithful in Sendai's Kleenex Stadium but the entire Tohoku region that had been devastated by the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake and subsequent tsunami.

Eagles teammate Casey McGehee calls him a "friggin' rock star," and, in fact, Ma-Kun is married to Japanese pop star Mai Satoda. As for his own taste in music, he likes to enter games to a tune by the Funky Monkey Babys: "Ato Hitotsu" ("After One").

If a team needs a No. 1 or No. 2 starter for its rotation, Tanaka might be just the guy. His peer and countryman Yu Darvish of the Texas Rangers just finished second in the AL Cy Young Award voting.

Tanaka is a fan favorite, obviously. And he seems to reciprocate the affection. AP Photo/Kyodo News

And if a club is looking for a way to increase revenue, Tanaka offers all sorts of branding and marketing opportunities, not to mention a boost in local hospitality revenue as a result of the legion of Japanese media members who will be following him.

We're talking about someone who helped draw more than 200,000 people to the parade celebrating the Eagles' championship at the end of November.

Under the old math, it cost the Rangers a $51.7 million posting fee to the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters and then a six-year, $60 million contract to land Darvish after the 2011 season. But the posting system then in effect heavily favored large-market MLB clubs capable of throwing around money that would not count against the luxury tax while at the same time limiting the negotiation leverage for the players, who could sign only with the team that won the bid.

Now, under the agreement finalized earlier this week, the maximum posting bid is $20 million, and every MLB team that goes that high -- there are expected to be several for Tanaka -- has 30 days in which to entice a player. It's a much better deal for MLB teams and Japanese players but a bummer for the Japanese team that loses a player of Tanaka's potential. Rakuten would get $31.7 million less than the Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters received for Darvish.

So there is still some question as to whether the Eagles will let him go. If they do, though, the bidding for his services will be fierce. Do we hear $100 million?

After consecutive win No. 21, which broke the Japanese record, Tanaka was given a special plate. AP Photo/Kyodo News

All Tanaka heard last spring, though, were whispers. A celebrity since he led his team to the championship of Summer Koshien (a national high school baseball tournament) as a junior back in 2005, Ma-Kun did not look good in the training camp for the World Baseball Classic. A lackluster appearance against Brazil had his coaches wondering what to do with him and Japanese fans worrying about their supposed ace. Their concerns seemed justified when he entered a first-round game against Cuba in the Fukuoka Dome, down 1-0 in the fourth inning, and promptly gave up two hits, including an RBI double, and then a third hit after a strikeout.

The Japanese have an expression: Jinsei wa naniga okoruka wakaranai, which, loosely translated, means "You never really know what's going to happen in life." Though Japan would eventually lose that WBC game to Cuba, Tanaka seemed to find himself after the rough beginning, trusting his off-speed pitches and striking out five straight batters swinging.

In Game 2 of the Japan Series, Masahiro Tanaka struck out 12 Yomiuri Giants. AP Photo/Kyodo News

With each K, the electricity in the crowd built, and so did his confidence. Tanaka is usually demonstrative on the mound, fist-pumping and yelling after a big out, but after the fifth strikeout against Cuba, he walked off with a cool look of determination on his face, as if he had figured it out. The WBC would be a disappointment for Japan -- it lost to Puerto Rico in the semifinals -- but it would provide Tanaka with the epiphany that led to one of the best seasons a pitcher on either side of Pacific has ever had.

The 24-0 record and the 1.27 ERA are self-explanatory. He faced 822 batters and gave up only six home runs in a season when a rejuvenated ball (the specs had been secretly changed before the 2013 season to bump up offense) helped Wladimir Balentien of the Yakult Swallows hit 60 homers. He had a WHIP of 0.943, 183 strikeouts in 212 innings and eight complete games -- uh, eight more than Max Scherzer had in winning the 2013 AL Cy Young Award.

Before he lost Game 6 of the Japan Series, Tanaka had won 30 straight starts over two seasons -- six more than the major league record set by Carl Hubbell of the New York Giants in 1936-37. He also saved one game in the regular season, one in the playoffs and Game 7 of the Series. Oh, and he won his third straight Gold Glove.

If his numbers aren't convincing enough, try these endorsements:

McGehee, who played five seasons in the majors before joining the Eagles last season: "He's a competitor, and that's the thing everybody likes most about him. The bigger the situation, the bigger jam he's in, he seems to always have another gear. You forget that he's only 25 -- he's wise beyond his years … If I was in a situation to have him on a team, I'd take him any day, anywhere, any time."

Marty Kuehnert, the American who serves as a senior adviser for the Eagles after signing Tanaka when he was the club's GM: "The first thing we could see when we got him was that he was much more mature than your average high school player. He just had that presence on the mound, like he was just in control from the get-go. Since then, he's gotten even more confident. And he's gotten bigger. He's gained a lot of muscle, kind of like Darvish, and he's getting an awful lot smarter."