The New York Yankees conveniently took the day off yesterday
giving me the time to collect myself and collect my thoughts after game one of
the 2015 season. By no means am I basing really anything off of just one game
in a 162 game marathon but I did see enough to at least throw some of my
thoughts onto paper before Game Two kicks off tonight in the Bronx. Let’s start
with Masahiro Tanaka and his 4 IP, 6 K and 5 R (4 ER) effort from Opening Day.
Tanaka looked absolutely filthy through the first two
innings, enough so that I attempted to get “TanaKa” trending on Twitter. He was
moving the ball up and down, left and right and making hitters look absolutely
silly. His velocity was down as expected but when your off speed stuff is as
good as his was through the first two innings you really don’t need 95 MPH on
your heat. Then the third inning came and Tanaka lost control of his slider
while the Blue Jays simply laid off of his splitter. Tanaka just didn’t seem to
trust his stuff and did not rear back and get that extra tick or two on the gun
when he needed to which ultimately doomed him and the Yankees in this contest.
I don’t think his elbow is the issue although I’m sure if
you watched ESPN Monday night, Tuesday and if you watch until his next start
their “experts” will tell you otherwise. Tanaka had four certified doctors
including Dr. James Andrews tell him to rest and rehab the elbow ligament, he’s
not taking the advice of a fly by night physician. He may be a little hesitant
to really open it up and see what it can do and what it can handle and
ultimately he may not trust his stuff because of it but I truly believe the
elbow is healthy. I could be wrong but I think with every start Tanaka gets
under his belt he is going to get more confident in himself and more sure of
his elbow and then, and only then, will we see the Tanaka we saw for the first
18 starts of the 2014 season.
I noticed he had changed his mechanics in spring training a bit! During the game, I could see he wasn't pitching his game at all, his command of the zone wasn't good enough to last the entire game.
ReplyDeleteI had confidence in him, more than he did in himself!
Suck it up boy, and pitch as long as your arm lets you!