Yankees: Sometimes, Things Just Don’t Go According To Plan

The Yankees, if they had a Plan B yesterday, never got to it as Plan A washed out so completely and quickly that it made your head spin. But that’s how smoothly 24-9 turns into 0-1 to start the season.

The Yankees took it on the chin yesterday at Tropicana Field losing to what are supposed to be the lowly Tampa Bay Rays 7-3 in a game they were never in.

From the beginning, Masahiro Tanaka clearly wasn’t himself, and he certainly wasn’t the pitcher who gave up only one earned for the entire spring. Rather, he was more like the Tanaka who made his final start of the season last year, surrendering four home runs that probably cost him the ERA title and possibly a Cy Young.

Cy Young, he wasn’t yesterday, though, as he gave up two more home runs and eight hits before he was rescued by Joe Girardi in the third inning after having thrown almost 70 pitches, each one more ineffective than the previous one.

Yankees Girardi Breaks Down The Loss

Tanaka at least proved one thing, though, as his catcher, Gary Sanchez, scattered in several directions scooping up balls in the dirt and reaching for pitches that missed the plate, often by as much as a foot. Sanchez showed that he has improved defensively by leaps and bounds over previous seasons.

Yankees Bats’ll Be Okay, But How About Tanaka

Aside from the fact the Yankees bats were stymied by the pitching of Chris Archer with the central core of their lineup going hitless, including Sanchez who went 0-5, while Greg Bird, Matt Holliday, and Jacoby Ellsbury all took O’fers for the day, the story of the day has to be Tanaka.

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To see Tanaka missing by so much, especially with a splitter that seemed to have a mind of its own.,

Normally, this not only uncharacteristic of Tanaka, but it gives cause to wonder if something happened to him physically over the days since his last spring start. Which, coincidentally, was also his worst start of the spring.

Tanaka rarely struggles mentally when he is pitching. And yet, today he seemed genuinely perplexed at what was happening to him. Usually, he’s the type of pitcher who, when he gives up four hits in a game, searches for reasons why it couldn’t have been two hits.

One game, one outing out of 30 over the long course of a baseball season. Right? The Yankees can only hope so as Tanaka has been the one guy everyone, including this writer, skips over and takes for granted during a run-down of the team’s starting rotation.

Yankees Turn To The Old Man

Ironically, attention now turns to the old man on the staff, CC Sabathia, as the stopper in a season that can’t go haywire from the get-go. The Yankees can’t afford a repeat of last year’s 8-14 start in a division holding the Red Sox and Blue Jays.

The team still has a chance to recover and take the series from the Rays with wins on Tuesday and Wednesday night before they move on to Baltimore to face the Orioles.

Yankees Opening Day Lineup A Mix Of Old And New

The Yankees Opening Day lineup presented by Joe Girardi is a mix of the old and the new. But, it has the potential to be more explosive than last season.

Chris Archer was not lights out against the Yankees yesterday. And the core of the lineup is still intact and will be deadly on other days. Sanchez hit two screamers, one off of Archer’s ankle in the first and one in the seventh to short with the bases loaded that could have gone the either way, and it’s a different ballgame.

But on this day, the Yankees just plain sucked. And no degree of rationalizing can negate that fact. On Tuesday, the old man gets his turn to rectify things.

No problem really, it was just a glancing blow.