’STROS TAG TANAKA
Righty gives up four runs in five innnings as Yanks miss out on sweep:
HOUSTON – When Ivan Nova takes the mound Friday night at Tropicana Field, he’ll try to move the Yankees one step closer to a postseason berth. He’ll also be making his final audition for the teams looking to add starting pitching before Monday’s non-waiver trade deadline.
Ironic, isn’t it? The better he pitches, the more it helps the Yankees – and the more it increases the chances he’ll be pitching in another uniform next week.
The Yankees have played their way back into contention during the past 11 days, their 8-3 run leaving them four games behind Boston for the second wild card spot and 4.5 games behind Toronto for the first wild-card position.
That leaves Brian Cashman in the uncomfortable position of deciding whether to deal away players for prospects or keep the band together and take a run at October. The recent run has likely been enough to keep Carlos Beltran and Andrew Miller in pinstripes for the rest of the season, but when it comes to a back-end rotation piece like Nova – a free agent at the end of the season – the stakes change. Unless the Yankees believe Nova is a key component for reaching the playoffs – and succeeding once they get there – then dealing him makes sense. Four or five teams out there are desperate to add a starter, and given Nova’s 2.66 ERA over his past four starts, the Yankees can probably haul in a decent prospect or two for a player they don’t seem intent on bringing back in 2017.
“The better you pitch or play, teams become more interested,” Joe Girardi said. “But it’s helping us get to a better spot, so we want to keep it going.”
With Nova set to start Friday, it wouldn’t be shocking to see him get traded before the 7:10 p.m. first pitch. If the Yankees are intent on dealing the righthander, why take a chance that he goes out and gets knocked around by the light-hitting Rays?
Give Nova credit: he’s not letting the trade talk bother him, raising his game to the next level this month. Having never played for another team, the 29-yearold is hoping to help the Yankees finish what they’ve started the past two weeks in their pursuit of a playoff spot.
“My focus is to help the team get back on track and win games,” Nova said. “I don’t see myself leaving, to be honest; if
it happens, it happens. It’s not in my mind that I’m going to be traded. I just focus on doing my job out there and trying to keep pitching the way I’ve been pitching lately.”
After watching the rotation battle inconsistency for the first three-plus months, the Yankees are finally getting what they had hoped for from the pitching staff.
During the 8-2 run, the starters were 7-1 with a major-league best 1.85 ERA, holding opponents to a .208 average. They’ve completed at least six innings in nine of those 10 starts, giving the Yankees distance they haven’t seen for most of the season.
“That’s the reason we’ve been winning, because our starting pitching has been really, really good,” Girardi said. “You watch them walk out every day before the game and they’re always together. It’s a close-knit group that feeds off of each other and pushes each other. You want it to be that way.”
If the rotation can continue its run – and given the ups and downs we’ve seen from Nathan Eovaldi, Michael Pineda, Nova and even CC Sabathia, it seems to be unlikely that would happen for two more months – then the Yankees could find themselves making an unlikely run at the AL East. If even four of the five can remain consistent, a wild card berth is well within their reach.
Would a Nova trade break up the rotation’s momentum? If Luis Severino can step in and find the form that made him a rising star last August and September, the F group shouldn’t miss a beat. or now, Nova is planning to pitch Friday night as the Yankees look to move closer to their October goal with a three-game set against the last-place Rays. Assuming he makes that start, he’ll then spend the weekend waiting to see what the next few days bring.