HELPING HANDS
Tanaka, bottom of lineup lead Yanks over Jays
TORONTO — When spring training opened, the Yankees’ starters had to answer questions about the rotation being the weakest link in a very strong chain.
A lineup anchored by Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Gary Sanchez was expected to possess plenty of muscle. The bullpen was loaded with high-powered arms to provide Aaron Boone with nightly buffets of intimidating heat and bowel-locking breaking balls. The rotation? Well, the Yankees attempted to pry Gerrit Cole away from the Pirates and were interested in free agent Yu Darvish. Clearly the brass had questions.
Two games into the season Luis Severino and Masahiro Tanaka have pitched brilliantly. Severino smothered the Blue Jays on Thursday and, after a pedestrian first two innings, Tanaka dominated them Friday night and hurled the Yankees to a 4-2 win in front of 33,716 at Rogers Centre.
“I think if all of our starters live up to their potential and keep doing their jobs then I think good things are going to happen,’’ Tanaka said.
One game after Severino blanked the Blue Jays across 5 2/3 innings Tanaka limited the losers to one run, three hits, and struck out eight in six frames.
“I don’t think he had his best split or his best stuff,’’ Boone said of Tanaka, who gave up a run and three hits in the first two innings and retired the final 13 batters (seven strikeouts) he faced before leaving the seventh inning to Tommy Kahnle. “He controlled the game and didn’t drive the pitch count [79] up. It was a quality effort by a really good pitcher.’’
Brandon Drury and Tyler Wade, the No. 8 and 9 hitters in a lineup that is without Greg Bird and Aaron Hicks, drove in two runs each on a night when Judge and Stanton went a combined 0-for-8. Judge was 0-for-4, hit into two double plays and struck out. One night after slugging two homers and driving in four runs Stanton was hitless in four at-bats and whiffed twice.
“I had a good plan against him,’’ Drury said of Blue Jays starter Aaron Sanchez, off whom he smoked a liner to right that hit high on the wall for an RBI double in the second. “I got some good pitches to hit and I took advantage of them. To get Tanaka some runs was good.’’
Wade, who struck out to strand two in the second and grounded out to leave two more on in the fourth, drove a two-run double into right-center in the sixth that extended the lead to 4-1.
“My first at-bat I didn’t get much to hit. The second at-bat I missed the pitch I was looking for,’’ Wade said. “The third one I made sure I didn’t miss it.’’
Kahnle worked a perfect sev- enth to increase the night’s consecutive outs streak to 16 batters. A leadoff walk to Russell Martin in the eighth stopped that and after Kevin Pillar flied to right Boone called for David Robertson who retired the next two batters.
After providing a dominant ninth inning on Thursday night when he struck out two of three batters in a non-save situation, Aroldis Chapman survived back-toback, two-out doubles in the ninth when he cemented a save by throwing a 100-mph fastball by a looking Randal Grichuk.
“I don’t think I was that good early in the game. The command wasn’t there and the offspeed stuff wasn’t coming out of the hand right so I was having a little bit of a tough time,’’ Tanaka said. “As I went deeper in the game I was able to adjust so to make the adjustment deeper in the game I think that was a plus.’’
Eighteen innings are crumbs of the 162game pie but that’s all the data available so far and the biggest question mark leaving the Florida palm trees has joined the muscle-bound lineup and gas-throwing bullpen as a strong link in the chain.