After a handful of poor starts, New York Yankees starting pitcher Masahiro Tanaka rebounded and threw an absolute gem on Sunday against the Toronto Blue Jays.
The 30 year old lefty out of Hyogo, Japan had been very inconsistent of late, giving up twelve and five runs with a two run outing in between in his last three starts prior.
But Sunday was different. Tanaka was completely dominant and fully in control. He punched out four over 8+ innings, allowing just three hits.
Over the first few innings, Tanaka went pretty splitter heavy, and relied on it to get his outs. As the game progressed on, he mixed in a lot more fastballs low in the zone. He rarely went high in the zone, often because batters weren’t biting at those pitches.
Through eight innings, Tanaka had only allowed an infield single to Bo Bichette and a clean single to Justin Smoak. At just 91 pitches, skipper Aaron Boone kept Tanaka in to start the ninth with Aroldis Chapman hot in the bullpen and ready as needed.
Ex-Yankee Brandon Drury singled to begin the bottom of the ninth, and that’s when Tanaka’s afternoon ended. Chapman came in to face Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who was pinch-hitting. That at-bat was absolute must-see TV. It took 13 pitches, but Chapman was able to induce him into a 6-4-3 double-play to clear the bases.
After a full-count single by Bichette on a slider that was way too high, Chapman struck out Cavan Biggio on a nasty slider that was probably a ball, and would of put the go-ahead runner on base if he didn’t swing.
All-in-all, it was good to see Tanaka have a good start and let’s just hope that he has more of these types of starts down the stretch.