HOUSTON — I believe the youngsters, if only they actually watched baseball, would have a term ready to describe what Masahiro Tanaka did Saturday night at Minute Maid Park.
That, friends, was some next-level (bleep).
A wizened ball fan might put it a different way: Tanaka has entered Bumgarner Territory.
The Yankees picked up the American League Championship Series win they needed here thanks most of all to Tanaka, their October god of the mound. With a 7-0 blanking of Zack Greinke and the Astros in Game 1, they can take a 1-0 lead to work for Sunday night’s Game 2 versus Justin Verlander and, while they’d never admit this, not feel the weight of the world on their shoulders before returning home to The Bronx.
Against the team that posted the best regular-season OPS (.848) in the major leagues, Tanaka threw six shutout innings, allowing only a single to Kyle Tucker while walking Alex Bregman — and both of them quickly got erased in double plays, meaning that Tanaka faced the minimum 18 batters while throwing a ridiculously efficient 68 pitches, 45 for strikes.
“That’s probably the best that we’ve seen him in a small sample to execute his game plan, his pitches, his tempo,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said of Tanaka. “Just about everything was working for him. We couldn’t create a ton of traffic for him. … He was just really, really good tonight.”
“Just going into the game with a plan … and really focusing on each pitch, executing your pitches, that’s kind of where it all comes down to,” the characteristically modest Tanaka said through an interpreter.
His October execution has been otherworldly. With this effort, Tanaka improved his career postseason numbers to rare air: Seven starts, 41 innings pitched and six earned runs for a 1.32 ERA, second behind Mariano Rivera (0.70) among Yankees with at least 40 innings clocked. Thanks to YES Network booth statistician James Smyth, we know Tanaka became the first pitcher in major league history to permit two or fewer runs in his first seven postseason starts.
If he can’t match Madison Bumgarner in volume — the free-agent-to-be put up a 2.11 ERA in 16 games totaling 102 ⅓ innings for the Giants from 2010 through 2016, earning three World Series rings — then Tanaka at least belongs in a conversation about the best playoff pitchers of this millennium.
“Yeah, obviously the numbers are there, and I guess I’m flattered,” Tanaka said. “But the happiest thing for me is us being able to get the W. And knowing that you went out there and you gave everything you had, that’s the feeling that you’re looking for. And so that’s kind of where I’m at with that.”
“I think he does a good job, clearly, of not necessarily making more of the moment,” Aaron Boone said of Tanaka. “But really, I think the guys that can lock in and are in command of their body and their mechanics have a chance to be better when the stakes are high. And he’s very good at that.”
Is he ever. By attacking as he did, and with his slider particularly effective — it accounted for all four of his strikeouts, Tanaka recorded eight of his outs on the ground and two via infield pop outs.
“He’s executing pitch after pitch,” Tanaka’s catcher Gary Sanchez said through an interpreter. “He has such sharpness, especially now in the playoffs.”
That sharpness gave the Yankees’ position players time to figure out the Astros’ starter Greinke, and that they did sufficiently as the amazing Gleyber Torres ripped an RBI double in the fourth to break the scoreless tie and followed that with a solo homer in the sixth en route to a five-RBI evening. Giancarlo Stanton, of all people, added his own solo blast in the sixth — maybe home runs do win you playoff games, after all? — before the Yankees poured it on against the Astros’ bullpen.
Can Tanaka’s fellow pitchers pick up the baton and keep pushing these Yankees toward the next level? Right now, with Tanaka leading the charge, anything and everything feels doable.
