Tanaka making progress

Masahiro Tanaka continued to progress after suffering a mild concussion on Saturday. The right-hander rode the stationary bicycle on Monday, Aaron Boone said.

“He did ride the bike today… I think 15 or 20 minutes on the bike. So that’s that’s obviously another important step as well as going through his baseline testing that he did really well on,” Boone said Monday. “So all signs continue to be encouraging with Masa, as he got his heart rate up today and there were no side effects, no symptoms.

“So we continue to be encouraged but I like what we’re doing in this new world of COVID similar to (what we’re doing with Masa right now. We’ll take it day by day,” Boone said. “I would just say we’re very encouraged with where he’s at and how he’s responding.”

Tanaka was hit in the head by a line drive Saturday. After suffering what the team called a mild concussion he was tested and released from New York Presbyterian. He has to go through a protocol prescribed by MLB before he can be cleared to return to baseball activities.

Boone said he was not sure what that timeline would be.

Tanaka was facing his third batter of live batting practice on the very first day of the official return to spring training. Giancarlo Stanton’s line drive was clocked at an exit velocity of 112 miles per hour.

Stanton crouched at the plate, his head in his hands immediately after.

“That was a scary moment, um, for me terrible initially,” Stanton said. “Of course, you never want to see your teammate on the ground especially by the hand of yourself. So, yeah, I’ve talked to him. He appears to be fine, you know given the circumstance.”

Stanton, of course, knows how bad it could be. The slugger was hit in the face by a Mike Fiers fastball in 2014. Like that incident, Stanton said it felt like it was in slow motion.