Healthy Tanaka can't win 'em all
MIAMI— If an ace pitcher succeeds in a ballgame, but no one is around to support it, does he make a sound?
Any day Masahiro Tanaka provides a quality start should be a good day for the Yankees. However, it can’t be a happy day when Tanaka starts it with the team in first place and the end result is second place.
If there was a point to be derived from the Yankees’ first regularseason visit to Marlins Park on Monday, it was that even a healthy Tanaka, the team’s greatest wish, won’t guarantee an achievement of goals.
A solid seven innings by Tanaka led nowhere besides a 21 Yankees’ loss to the Marlins, with South Florida favorite Alex Rodriguez wrapping things up — after his entrance as a pinch hitter electrified the announced crowd of 33,961 — by popping out to Miami stud right fielder Giancarlo Stanton. The Yankees now have lost four of five games, and this one, combined with the Rays’ 61 victory overWashington, put the Yankees a game behind the Rays ( although even in the loss column) in the resurgent American League East.
“It’s not about our offense,” Tanaka said through his interpreter. “I blame myself.”
Eh. The Yankees had won Tanaka’s last five starts; their only such loss came to Toronto on Opening Day. This one easily could have fallen in the win column, too, as Tanaka scattered nine hits over seven innings, limiting the home team to two runs, while striking out six. “I thought he was pretty good,” manager Joe Girardi said. “You’re going to be in games like is. The good news is that he pitched well.”
Girardi offered little praise for Tanaka’s counterpart Tom Koehler, the Bronx native who started and won the game for the Marlins. “Therewere some real good defensive plays that they made,” the Yankees’ manager said, and evidence existed to support his assertion.
Marlins shortstop Adeiny Hechavarria made a pair of spectacular stops on Chase Headley line drives, diving into the hole to stop a firstinning missile and leaping skyhigh to cut off a sixthinning rip. In all, the Yankees hit six line drives into outs.
Tanaka, meanwhile, limited the Marlins to one hit in five atbats with runners in scoring position, and he minimized his adversity by issuing no walks. When he served up a seventhinning homer to Derek Dietrich, however, he found himself in the 21 hole that wound up as the final score.
“I was trying to go outside on him,” Tanaka said. “It kind of drifted inside.”
Even after these lousy results, the Yankees remained third in the AL with 288 runs scored. It’s rather mindblowing to look at the many currently belowaverage bats in the Yankees’ lineup — Carlos Beltran, Stephen Drew, Didi Gregorius and Chase Headley, plus the fillins for the injured Jacoby Ellsbury — and then realize that the Yankees stand in serious contention BECAUSE of their offense, not despite it.
That’s because Brett Gardner, BrianMcCann, ARod and Mark Teixeira ( whose secondinning homer Monday accounted for the Yankees’ only run) all have beenwellabove average, aswas Ellsbury when healthy.
The obvious concern about the Yankees’ offense is its topheavy nature. ARod and Teixeira in particular have dramatically exceeded all expectations, and both have avoided the sort of injuries that hindered both their availability and their production in recent seasons. The flip side is that the Yankees hope they have more coming from Headley and Beltran, and if Drew and Gregorius can’t continue their recent upswings, the Yankees could call up prospect Rob Refsnyder, who carries with him a superior offensive profile.
The real differencemakers, the Yankees believe, are Tanaka and Michael Pineda as the top two men in their starting rotation. Sometimes, though, your top pitcher can fulfill expectations and — through very little fault of his own — still provide the wrong kind of difference.