BOSTON — Masahiro Tanaka gave up only one run to the Red Sox on Sunday night, and even though he was effective, he couldn’t get out of the fifth inning.
It took 97 pitches for the right-hander to go 4 2/3 innings, and afterward, he said there wasn’t much he could do about the high pitch count.
“You do want to keep it down,’’ Tanaka said through an interpreter after a 5-4, 10-inning Yankees loss at Fenway Park. “But in a game like today, you don’t want to give up a run. You need to throw a number of pitches to do that.”
And after giving up 10 runs in 10 1/3 innings in two starts against Boston this season, Tanaka was significantly better Sunday.
He saw his 21 2/3-inning shutout streak end when he allowed a one-out homer to Mookie Betts that gave the Red Sox a 1-0 lead, but he and the three relievers did enough to hand a three-run lead to Aroldis Chapman, who blew the game in the ninth.
A Yankees offense that went silent against Rick Porcello on Friday and stayed that way with Nathan Eovaldi on the mound Saturday, was quiet versus David Price until the seventh.
Price, normally a Yankee punching bag, was actually better than Tanaka for much of his outing.
Tanaka matched Price through four innings at Fenway Park, but while he didn’t allow a run, he threw 82 pitches in keeping Boston off the scoreboard.
He pitched around a one-out double by Andrew Benintendi in the first by fanning Steve Pearce — who hurt the Yankees throughout the series — and MVP candidate J.D. Martinez.
Tanaka allowed a pair of infield hits in the second, but Xander Bogaerts was caught stealing and Brock Holt lined out to end the inning.
In the third, after consecutive singles by Betts and Benintendi, Tanaka again came back and struck out Pearce and Martinez.
He punctuated the Martinez strikeout by pounding his fist and smiling as he walked off the field.
Even after allowing the homer to Betts, Tanaka seemed poised to finish the inning, but after whiffing Benintendi for the second out, Miguel Andujar ole’d a chopper by Pearce that went for a two-base error.
David Robertson came on and fanned Martinez — his third strikeout in the first five innings — to end the threat, but not before Tanaka glared at home plate umpire Chris Conroy as he left the field.
And although it was the second time in his last five starts that Tanaka wasn’t able to finish the fifth inning, he was far more effective on Sunday night than when he got just one out in the fifth against the Orioles in a July 10 loss.
This performance was far from brilliant, but he matched a season-high with nine strikeouts, despite the outing’s brevity. In his last four starts, Tanaka has lowered his ERA from 4.68 to 3.76.
With Luis Severino and CC Sabathia both struggling, J.A. Happ recovering from hand, foot and mouth disease and Lance Lynn about to make his first start for the Yankees since arriving in a trade from Minnesota, the Yankees need all they can get from Tanaka.
