Yankees Masahiro Tanaka Hits Bump in the Road to Cy Young Award
New York Yankees ace Masahiro Tanaka may no longer be the favorite for the 2016 American League Cy Young award after a rough start against the Rays Wednesday and the news he will miss his next turn in the rotation.
One bad inning may be what ultimately costs Yankees starter Masahiro Tanaka the Cy Young award. While the majority of his outing was strong, Tanaka allowed an incredible four solo home runs in the third frame of Wednesday’s 11-5 win over the Tampa Bay Rays. He had never before allowed four homers in a game during his career, let along one inning.
Rays catcher Bobby Wilson led off the inning with a booming shot to deep left-center. After Tanaka retired the next two batters, Evan Longoria, Brad Miller, and Corey Dickerson actually went back-to-back-to-back with their long-balls. You definitely don’t see that every day, especially not against a Cy Young contender.
Because the Yankees offense had already put up seven runs, Joe Girardi left his ace in, and Tanaka rewarded his decision by putting up another three scoreless. Tanaka allowed four earned runs over six innings on the night, striking out five and walking two.
The fact that he was able to put his awful third inning behind him and get back to his usual self was extremely impressive. Nothing rattles him.
With the uneven appearance, Tanaka broke a string of six straight starts with two or fewer earned runs. It was the first time he had received a game score of less than 50 since August 2nd. The outing raised his ERA from 2.97 to 3.07, but as of this writing he still has the AL lead in that category, just ahead of Rick Porcello at 3.08 and Corey Kluber at 3.11.
At the moment, Kluber and Porcello represent Tanaka’s strongest competition for taking home the hardware, but Chris Sale, Justin Verlander, J.A. Happ, Michael Fulmer, and Cole Hamels could also receive consideration.
Tanaka’s biggest area of weakness is his win-loss record. He’s 14-4, while Porcello and Happ have already topped the 20 win mark. That’s not as big of a deal as it used to be, but it’s a nice tiebreaker.
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If Masahiro ran away with the ERA title, that would give him a strong leg-up on his competition. If he’s basically tied with his competitors, the anti-Yankees bias that is undeniable in these major awards will probably mean he gets pushed aside.
The other factor that hurts him is his lack of strikeouts. Tanaka was a K machine when he first came over, but these days he’s more about limiting base-runners and keeping the ball in the yard. That’s not as sexy as Kluber’s 224 punch-outs (9.555 K/9).
This race is so close that it may come down to who has the best finish to the season. The fact that he will miss at least one of his remaining two starts with a “slight slight slight” forearm strain probably means that he’ll fall far enough behind his competitors to keep him from winning.
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