Masahiro Tanaka has a home run problem. This isn’t news to Yankee fans who have watched the right-hander since 2014 but it seems to get worse every season. On Monday night against the Texas Rangers, Tanaka surrendered two home runs to bring his season total, thus far, to 11. He has given up five in […]
Tag: Masahiro Tanaka
Sonny Gray is Struggling, but All is not Lost
In January, the New York Daily News published a column speculating on which starting pitchers the Yankees could add during July’s trade deadline. Seven months away. Before a pitch had been thrown at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, Florida. Before Joe Kelly and Tyler Austin reignited the bitterness in a decades-old rivalry. Before Sonny Gray […]
Tanaka stays, now what?
Masahiro Tanaka will not opt out of his contract or sign an extension. He’s a Yankee for the next three years at $22 million/year. Now what happens? Starting Rotation Implications The 2018 Yankee starting rotation is currently: Luis Severino Masahiro Tanaka Sonny Gray Jordan Montgomery Open CC Sabathia is the obvious candidate for the open […]
Statcast Year in Review: Masahiro Tanaka
Within three days of the end of the World Series, Masahiro Tanaka will have to decided whether or not to opt-out of the final three years and $66 million of his contract. His is one of the more interesting opt-out cases to come up in recent years. Will he opt-out? Should the Yankees re-sign him […]
All This Velocity Talk
There’s a good chance if you’ve found your way to a niche Baseball Prospectus site covering the New York Yankees, you’re in the loop with the more prominent stories over the first week of the season. One thing that’s been the subject of much discussion is velocity. Major League Baseball has switched from PITCHf/x to Trackman for in-stadium […]
Masahiro Tanaka is one of the year’s few bright spots
The question arises, not always out loud, after every win. “But what happens tomorrow?” Yes, the Yankees may have won, but what happens on the next day? Do they continue their winning ways, or do they wake up in a cold sweat of doubt and ineptitude? Do they build on the progress that was made, […]
Game 47 Recap: Tanaka to the rescue
In a battle to avoid falling to the cellar of the AL East, the Yankees opened a three-game set with the host Tampa Bay Rays on Friday night and won the opener by a final score of 4-1. Masahiro Tanaka continued to be lights out for the Yankees, allowing just two hits while cruising through seven […]
How the Yankees can remain contenders through their rebuild
Last week on this site, Ben Diamond wrote that the Yankees might be approaching a brief drop in the standings as they prepare for the massive off-season in 2018 that could feature Bryce Harper, Andrew McCutchen, Manny Machado, Jose Fernandez, Matt Harvey and eleventy-seven other All-Stars. A year ago I would have wholeheartedly agreed with Ben’s […]
Finding the Yankees a Young Starting Pitcher
So far this offseason, the Yankees have focused on bolstering their batting order through trades for outfielder Aaron Hicks and infielder Starlin Castro. But now, with the team’s position-player alignment pretty much set (barring a trade of Brett Gardner) it is time to talk about pitching. If the season started tomorrow, the Yankees’ starting rotation […]
Yankees have need for pitching, but nowhere to put it
Pitching is weird. We all understand that, no? Pitchers are guys that contort their shoulders and arms in unnatural ways so that they can throw a sphere of cork, string and hide faster than that jerk that sped by you on the highway the other day. Sports are generally pretty strange when you really sit […]