NY YANKEES: WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH MASAHIRO TANAKA?

NY YANKEES: WHAT'S THE DEAL WITH MASAHIRO TANAKA?

By: Matthew Blittner

Today, Saturday August 12th, 2017, the New York Yankees announced that once again, presumptive staff ace, Masahiro Tanaka has been placed on the 10-Day DL, this time with right shoulder inflammation.

In his fourth season with the Bombers, Tanaka has hit the DL for the third time in his stateside career.

A prized pitcher out of Japan, Tanaka came to the Yankees on a 7-year/$155million contract -- signed prior to the 2014 season. With the signing came high expectations and much fanfare. 

Initially Tanaka proved he was up to the task of meeting the expectations. He got off to a 12-4 start during the 2014 season, before being shutdown with a partially torn UCL. Normally such an injury requires Tommy John Surgery, but on the advice of his doctors, Tanaka was prescribed rest and given a PRP injection. Six weeks later he was back on a Major League mound.

After finishing his rookie campaign with a 13-5 record there was uneasiness surrounding the health of his right elbow.

A mediocre start to the 2015 season, coupled with another DL stint for forearm soreness had many convinced that Tommy John Surgery was now a necessity. But Tanaka proved his critics wrong and rebounded to finish the year with a 12-7 record.

Come 2016, most of his health issues were a thing of the past as Tanaka posted a career-high 31 starts for the Yanks and compiled a 14-4 record in a career-high 199.2 innings.

2017 was supposed to be a year in which Tanaka would be motivated to have a career-best season so that he could opt-out of his contract at year end and cash in on a new more lucrative contract. Alas, an increased home run rate -- partly due to bad luck, and partly due to natural pitching mistakes -- had Tanaka on a career-worst trajectory.

This was a two-fold problem for the Bombers. One, a pitcher who is underperforming is a detriment to his team. Two, if Tanaka felt that he wouldn't make more money on the open-market, then he would not opt-out of his contract and the Yankees would be stuck with an albatross of a contract.

Recently though, Tanaka had been turning his season around, with seven quality starts in his past 11 starts. But that stretch is now marred by his third DL stint, and that begs the question, what's next?

Clearly Tanaka has not been right all year, and that was going to cause some concern regarding whether or not he would opt-out. Let's put that aside now, because that's not going to happen. Between the year that Tanaka has had, and his now resurfacing health issues, Masahiro would be foolish to opt-out as no team would give him a raise on his current salary of $22million/per season.

The bigger question though is, what does this mean for the Yanks' chances of making the postseason?

An inconsistent team since their 21-9 start, the Yanks find themselves 4.5 games behind their rivals the Boston Red Sox in the AL East Division. With CC Sabathia on the DL and now Tanaka, the Yanks are dealing with major injuries at the wrong time. 

They can say that the acquisitions of Sonny Gray and Jaime Garcia will let them weather the storm, but Garcia has been among the worst pitchers in the league for a while now. Meanwhile, Gray is going to need some time to acclimate to a pennant race, especially in the AL East, which has historically been his worst division to pitch against.

So, the injury to Tanaka has proved to be crippling to not only his potential earnings, but to the team, and at this point in their season, that is not something that the Yankees can afford. The hope is that Tanaka will be back in roughly 15 days and will be fresh down, the stretch, but logic dictates that that won't be the case.