Yankees News: Masahiro Tanaka On the Mend

New York Yankees ace Masahiro Tanaka was placed on the DL in the end of April with tightness in his forearm and tendinitis in the wrist of his pitching arm. As Yankees fans and the entire organization held their breath, the right-hander underwent an MRI, and the results fortunately came back clean. GM Brian Cashman later announced that there would be no timetable on his return, and shut him down for at least month, as any GM should when you have as big a financial investment as the Yankees do on Tanaka in any of their players.

The fallen ace took his first stride forward on his road back to recovery for the New York Yankees on Thursday. He threw 50 pitches from 60 feet, and according to skipper Joe Girardi, he’s scheduled to do so again on Friday.

"“We’re just going day by day,” Girardi told Dan Martin of the New York Post. “I think if he was gonna have an issue throwing at 60 feet, he would have felt it [Thursday]. I wouldn’t expect there to be anything [Friday].”"

As you all probably remember like it was yesterday, the right-hander missed more than two months last season after suffering a small tear in the UCL of his pitching elbow. After getting the opinions of numerous doctors, Tanaka elected to rehabilitate the tear through strength exercises rather than undergoing season-ending Tommy John surgery.

He first complained about the soreness in his pitching arm after his last start that came in 30 degree weather on April 23 in Detroit.

Because the Yankees shut Tanaka down for the time being, he’ll likely need to build his arm back up in a series of long toss’ and bullpen sessions and possibly even a rehab start before re-joining the Yankees rotation.

While he’s mending, the Yankees have been playing some pretty good baseball as of late, and if Michael Pineda can continue to lead the Yankees while back-end rotation guys like Adam Warren and Chase Whitley can continue to pitch well, the Yankees should remain afloat until Tanaka is ready to return to the major league mound.

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