TANAKA TAKES IT UP A NOTCH
Masahiro feels like he’s improved since opener
Baby steps for Masahiro Tanaka. The Yankees righthander showed incremental improvement in Friday night’s 4-3 victory over the Cardinals at the Stadium, the Bombers’ fifth in a row and fourth straight at home. Tanaka showcased livelier off-speed pitches and more consistent command, leading to both his first quality start and win of 2017. He allowed three earned runs on five hits over 6.1 innings.
Better, but still not satisfying for Tanaka, the Yankee ace who’s earning $22 million this season. He’s allowed 13 earned runs in 14 innings so far, the bulk of which came in a disastrous Opening Day start at the Rays — though Tanaka agreed Friday’s outing was one off which he could build.
“I do feel I’m making the right strides,” Tanaka said through a translator.
And yet the Japanese star had to handle adversity to make those strides. Tanaka surrendered a no-doubt two-run homer to Matt Carpenter in the top of the first on the eighth pitch of the at-bat. Carpenter brought home Aledmys Diaz, who reached on a slow-rolling infield single to shortstop.
Tanaka flashed his full repertoire to Carpenter, throwing his sinker, slider, splitter and four-seam fastball to the Cardinals first baseman at various stages of the at-bat. Carpenter fouled off three pitches, two of them with the count full, before Tanaka fired a 94-mph fastball that caught too much of the plate. Carpenter turned on the pitch and deposited it in the right-center field seats.
“He was battling through an at-bat. We’d thrown him everything,” Yankees catcher Austin Romine said. “Look, he’s a good hitter. He’s hitting 3 for a reason. He got him. Plain
and simple.”
The Yankees picked up Tanaka in the bottom half, though. After Brett Gardner walked to lead off the frame, Starlin Castro sliced an opposite-field home run over the right-field fence to knot the game at 2 — a play Tanaka admitted was crucial for his psyche.
“That was a mental boost,” he said. “I got into a better rhythm, better tempo after that.”
Tanaka allowed just one hit over the next five innings and retired 10 straight batters from the end of the third through the sixth, as the Yankees took a 3-2 lead on a Romine homer. But he encountered unlucky trouble in the seventh, which ultimately ended his night.
Matt Adams led off with a broken-bat infield single that beat the shift. Tanaka then drew a groundout from Yadier Molina before walking Jhonny Peralta, setting up first and second with one out.
Randal Grichuk delivered the knockout blow, smashing a hanging slider to left field for a double that cut the deficit to one. Joe Girardi pulled Tanaka for the next batter in favor of righthander Tyler Clippard.
“If you start in the third inning, I thought his stuff got really sharp,” Girardi said of Tanaka. “It’s unfortunate that seventh inning kind of started the way it did, but that’s baseball.”
Clippard escaped the jam unscathed by retiring Kolten Wong and Dexter Fowler. Dellin Betances and Aroldis Chapman then pitched scoreless eighth and ninth innings, respectively, to close the game out for Tanaka.
“Masa pitched a great game,” Clippard said. “And for me, watching him battle the way he did, it made it that much more special to get out of it for him.”