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Yankees Editorial: Team Need’s Everything To Go Right to Contend in 2015

By Michael Cambria

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Obviously this is true about almost every team in baseball, but it seems likely that this will be especially true for these Yankees as they made their season debut on Monday in a loss to the Toronto Blue Jays.

"“There’s a lot of things that have to go right for you to be where you want to be at the end of October,” Joe Girardi told reporters prior to Monday’s game. “But I feel there’s a lot of great pieces here. I feel there’s a lot of guys that are going to have really good years, and it’s our job to keep them on the field every day. But I like what we’ve assembled.”"

For the New York Yankees, they’ll need plenty of things to go right and then some if they want to be a playoff contender for the first time in the three seasons. The entire core of the Yankees lineup is coming back from an abysmal season in 2014. The team has no idea who their go-to closer is. Alex Rodriguez, arguably their best hitter on opening day will be turning 40 in the middle of the baseball season.

And than there’s the teams Opening Day starting pitcher, Mr. Masahiro Tanaka.

On a team capable of winning 90 games, yet one bad injury away from tailspinning to the the basement of the AL East, there is not a more crucial situation quite like the one the Yankees are in with Masahiro Tanaka.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, Tanaka will be under a microscope all season as he’ll try to avoid Tommy John surgery with each and every pitch thrown. He managed to make it through spring training and one shaky start so far this season completely healthy, but he generated a ton of negative speculation just days before the start of the season when he told reporters that he’s not planning to throw with as much velocity as he did in 2014. Instead, he announced that he’ll rely on the movement of his two-seam fastball rather than his harder throwing four-seam fastball.

"“There’s so much talk about it,” Girardi told reporters. “But until guys get out there, it’s speculation. He’s not exactly sure what he’s going to have every day when he goes out there. That’s just the nature of being a pitcher. You feel you’re always going to have your best stuff when you warm up, but some days it’s just not quite the same. For me, I’m just going to watch and see what happens.”"

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