Welcome back to first place. Friday night’s 6-1 win over the Rays combined with the Red Sox losing the Royals moved the Yankees back into the top spot in the AL East. It’s only a half-game lead (two in the loss column), but being in first place is better than not being in first place. The Yankees have won five straight ballgames. This winning stuff is fun, isn’t it?
TanaKKKKKKKKKKKKKKa
In his first two starts of the season against the Rays, Masahiro Tanaka allowed 13 runs on 17 hits in 5.2 total innings. On Friday night, Tanaka went 5.2 innings before allowing his first baserunner. He struck out the first five and seven of the first nine batters he faced, and it wasn’t until Adeiny Hechavarria found a hole with a ground ball that Tampa had a runner reach base. Seventeen up, seventeen down to start the game.
Tanaka was on cruise control all night. He did not have a single stressful inning — Tanaka struck out Mallex Smith to end the inning after Hechavarria’s two-out single — and only three of the 26 batters he faced hit the ball hard. Hechavarria on his fifth inning single, Corey Dickerson on his sixth inning line out to left field, and Lucas Duda on his seventh inning solo home run inside the right field foul pole. Stupid solo homers. The Yankees were up 5-0 at the time, so no big deal.
The biggest difference between Tanaka on Friday and Tanaka most of the rest of the season? The quality of his slider. Seven of his career high 14 strikeouts came on sliders, plus he got two ground balls and a pop-up with the pitch. Tanaka threw 43 sliders Friday. Here are the pitch locations, via Baseball Savant. Tanaka did a great job getting that slider down and to the gloveside.
Over his last nine starts now Tanaka has a 3.28 ERA (3.31 FIP) with 74 strikeouts and only nine walks in 56.2 innings. That’s awfully close to the 3.07 ERA (3.51 FIP) guy we saw last season. The home runs are still an annoying problem (1.59 HR/9 in those 56.2 innings), but as long as they’re solo shots, Tanaka and the Yankees will live. Welcome back, good Masahiro Tanaka. It’s nice to have you around.
The Baby Bombers Are Growing Up Fast
Back-to-back home runs by Brett Gardner. He ended Thursday night’s game with a walk-off home run and started Friday night’s game with a leadoff home run. That is pretty darn cool. Not as rare as you may think though! Gardner is only the second player this season to do the walk-off homer/leadoff homer thing. George Springer did it back in April. Still pretty neat. Just like that, the Yankees had a quick 1-0 lead.
A leadoff home run is always appreciated, and since Austin Pruitt came into this game with a 6.25 ERA (3.31 FIP!), it was easy to think more runs were on the way. And they were, but not right away. Pruitt retired ten straight after Gardner’s leadoff homer. It wasn’t until the fourth inning that the Yankees got on the board again. Pruitt busted Aaron Judge inside with a fastball and got him to foul it off for strike too. Pruitt tried it again and Judge hit it into the left field seats for a solo home runs and a 2-0 lead.
In the fifth, the Yankees broke the game open. Todd Frazier drew a one-out walk, Brett Gardner drew a two-out walk, and Clint Frazier annihilated an 89 mph middle-middle fastball for a three-run home run. Here’s the video. Listen to this damn thing:
The 455-foot blast was the sixth longest homer by a Yankee this season and third longest by someone other than Judge. Only Matt Holliday (459) and Ji-Man Choi (456) have hit longer homers among non-Judge Yankees. Two solo homers plus one three-run homer equals a 5-0 lead through five. Between the pitching and the dingers, this was pretty much the perfect game.
Leftovers
Didi Gregorius extended his hitting streak to ten games with an eighth inning single, which drove in his team’s sixth run of the game. Gardner was hit by a pitch and Gary Sanchez was intentionally walked earlier in the inning. Gardner scored on the single and Sanchez was thrown out at the plate, though it was a bang-bang play. Would’ve been more annoying had the Yankees not been up by five.
Gardner (homer, walk, hit-by-pitch) and Sanchez (single, intentional walk) were the only Yankees to reach base multiple times. The young Frazier, Judge, and Gregorius had base hits and the old Frazier drew a walk. The 6-7-8-9 hitters went a combined 0-for-11 with one walk and six strikeouts. Yikes. That includes and 0-for-3 with two strikeouts for Holliday, who continue to looks completely lost.
David Robertson was the only reliever used. He retired all three batters he faced in the ninth inning on six pitches, and even squeezed a strikeout in there. Robertson’s pitch counts in his five appearances back with the Yankees, all full innings: 13, 13, 10, 7, 6. I guess he learned how to be efficient in Chicago?
Box Score, WPA Graph & Standings
ESPN has the box score and updated standings while MLB.com has the video highlights. I’m having some Google problems, so head to FanGraphs for the bullpen workload for the time being. Here’s the win probability graph:
Source: FanGraphs
Up Next
The Yankees and Rays continue this four-game series Saturday afternoon at 1pm ET. It’s not one of those weird 4pm ET starts, thankfully. Lefties Caleb Smith and Blake Snell are the scheduled starting pitchers. There are five games left on the homestand and RAB Tickets can get you in the door to any and all of them.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.