Masahiro Tanaka had nothing and he knew it.
“Actually it started with my bullpen,” Tanaka said through a translator. “I didn’t have a good bullpen.”
And then the right-hander proved his deficiency immediately by surrendering a sharp hit up the middle on his first pitch of the game to Yunel Escobar, who would come around to score three batters later on a two-out Albert Pujols single.
But the Angels would score only once more through seven innings against Tanaka in a game in which it was not about his splitter or his slider or his two-seamer, but all about his heart.
Stuff happens, but on Monday night by the Macombs Dam Bridge, heart trumped stuff.
Tanaka tapped his chest four, five, six times.
“I grinded,” Tanaka said. “I struggled with all my [pitches]. I didn’t really have much.”
He tapped his chest again.
“It came down to right here,” he said. “I said [to myself] I really need to get it together. I kept on grinding. I was able to grind it out.”
And when the Yankees, somnambulant and meekly compliant through the first six innings against Matt Shoemaker, clubbed three home runs in the seventh and eighth, they had grinded out a 5-2 victory in the Bronx.
This was the first of a seven-game homestand, with the first four against the Angels, the final three against Detroit. Then come 11 games, on the road and at home, against Colorado and Minnesota. So 18 straight against teams well within the Yankees’ weight class.
“I hate to label this homestand as [critical],” strikeout-bot Andrew Miller said after getting K’s on all three men he faced in the eighth — including Mike Trout and Pujols — before turning it over to Aroldis Chapman for the save. “But it’s nice to win series, get sweeps, and go on a run. I think the team is capable of a run.
“I think we’re a better team than fourth in our division.”
Maybe, but the Yankees have done little yet to prove they can keep pace with the Orioles, Red Sox and Blue Jays. They are 27-30 on merit. Yes, the back end of the bullpen has been as electric as conceived and advertised, and yes, it has been a singular strength, but almost literally.
As in, the Yankees’ only strength.
But maybe not. Because over the last month to six weeks, since CC Sabathia began to rack up outs with regularity and Ivan Nova replaced the imploding young Luis Severino, the rotation has emerged as an asset.
Maybe they can’t match the Mets in this department — who can? — but aside from Michael Pineda, the Yankees’ starters have far more often than not given their team the chance to win.
“That’s my job, to give my team the chance to win,” said Tanaka, who has allowed five runs in 27 innings over his last four starts, and whose team is 8-4 in his dozen starts. “You try to replicate what the guy in front of you is doing.
“It’s worked well for us.”
It has been a constant throughout lost baseball summers for mediocre or bad teams. If it isn’t one thing, it’s another. When one leak is plugged, another gushes. When the Yankee pitching was good, the bats were silent. Last week when the offense came out of its funk, the bullpen slumped.
And so it seemed through six innings (and two outs) that Tanaka’s effort would not be rewarded. Shoemaker threw only 46 pitches through five innings, and 59 through six. There were two out and none on when Brian McCann and Starlin Castro went back-to-back in the seventh before Carlos Beltran poled a three-run job the opposite way after two out and none had been on in the eighth.
On this night, it was about Yankees power. On this night, it was about Yankees pitching, and not only the fearsome guys coming out of the bullpen. The Yankees are beginning to spin on their rotation.
“I [always] felt pretty good about our starters,” Joe Girardi said. “I think some of our starters struggled at the beginning when we maybe didn’t anticipate it but the last [month] they’ve been really good.”
And so it goes. A rotation filled with red flags may be a source of strength as the Yankees aim for the checkered flag of the playoffs.
You’ve got to have pitching.
You’ve got to have heart.
