Yankees will promote Chance Adams but not demote Masahiro Tanaka

Yankees Masahiro Tanaka is under performing. Meanwhile, SP Chance Adams is already the best pitcher in Triple-A. The solution should be simple: sit Tanaka and let Adams get a start. Instead, the Yankees will pull a Solomon move and split the baby: they will give Adams at least one start while allowing Tanaka to stay in the rotation.

Yankees pitching has been better than hoped for. It has also been more inexplicable. CC looks like he has found the fountain of youth while Pineda has not once melted down. But most difficult to understand is the season Masahiro Tanaka is having.

And that is in part because of his spring training. The guy was unhittable. He gave up one earned run in 23 and 2/3rd innings with a 28/5 strikeout to walk ratio. As that one earned run did not come from a home run, he also gave up zero homers for the spring.

The regular season has not gone as well. The Hiro has given up 48 earned runs, 81 hits, and 17 dingers, fourth most in the majors, in his 66 innings pitched. His WHIP is 1.50, and his ERA—6.55—is the second-worst in all of baseball, only in front of the Ancient One, Bartolo Colon (7.78).

I am not sure who the ace of the Yankees staff is, but it is not Masahiro Tanaka.

Keep Your Approach Simple

There does seem to be at least a temporary solution: Promote Chance Adams. He is already the best pitcher in Triple-A; not just for the Yankees but in the entire International League. Adams has pitched 29 innings but only given up 14 hits and two home runs. His ERA (2.17) is third in the league, while his WHIP (0.89) is first.

And he’s struck out 34 in those 29 innings, but only issued 11 walks. Every number is better than Tanaka’s.

The solution seems simple: sit Masahiro and call up Adams for a start. But if the Yankees and Joe Girardi have one big fault, it is too much loyalty and respect for veterans.

Last year they stuck with Mark Teixeira and Alex Rodriguez way too long. Those decisions helped doom the Yankees 2016 season.

They are doing the same with Tanaka, for three good reasons. The first is that they have Tanaka for three more years and do not want to de-incentivize him. Too many Yankees fans, though, winning games now is more important than some separate season somewhere down the road.

A Hope and a Prayer

And that should be the winning argument. Girardi has, many times, explained using pitchers for unusual lengths by saying he is focused on winning that night’s game. The same should be true for Tanaka. Sending him out there right now is hoping to win, not planning to win.

Therefore, they should bring up their top pitching prospect, Adams. The Yankees would have to make a roster move, but that should not be that hard. Underperforming or used-to-be prospects such as SP Tommy Layne (7.50 ERA), SS Jorge Mateo (.249/.292/.409), and Mason Williams (.236/.280/.251) could all be dropped from the 40-man roster.

No, the second good reason not to bring him up is that the Yankees might only want to give Tanaka one start off and then send Adams down. But he only has three such trips before he must go through waivers and the team is reluctant to start that process so early in the season.

The last reason the Yankees are reticent is that Chance still needs to work on his fastball command. That might seem strange given his dominance, but Luis Severino looked even better in the minors, but he had to improve his fastball command to be successful in the show.

Flawed Logic

Things are at an impasse. The Yankees want to win more games but doubt that they would be better off replacing Tanaka with Adams. A sixth starter could do both. The right pitcher would give the Yankees a chance to win five out of every six games, instead of four out of every five.

Over the next 60 games, the Yankees could win 50 games with a six-man but only 48 with a five-man. Baseball does not work that way, and the logic is somewhat flawed, but the potential still proves the point.

Again, the Yankees stated goal is to win every night, and this gives them a better opportunity to win on more nights (theoretically).

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And that’s why they will do both. Very soon the Yankees will announce that they are giving Adams a start in place of Tanaka. That is probably why he is pitching on the same days as Masahiro; both started on the sixth of June, for instance.

But they will only push Tanaka back a day, not remove him. Most pitchers perform better with an extra day of rest, and The Hiro is far from the exception.

The move can be defended without seeming like a threat to Tanaka because the Yankees just started a 13-game run with no days off.

How an Empire Works

This will create a six-man rotation for a brief time. If Tanaka does better in his next start, Adams might move to the bullpen, as many starters must work out of the pen in their first year. Chance would start as the long man and continue to throw 75-80 pitches in his side sessions. That would keep him available to start for a couple of weeks, after which he could return to the RailRiders.

But if Masahiro struggles, Adams can stay in the rotation until Tanaka improves or is finally sat for a start or two. That is very likely to happen at some point, and Chance could return to the minors once Tanaka has two good starts in a row.

Next: A Look at the Yankees Farm System, starting with Low-A Charleston

I could write more, as my readers know only too well. But I want to get this piece out before the Yankees make the expected announcement, which is coming soon. And that means that Chance Adams is coming soon.

Unfortunately for Yankees fans, he will be coming to help Tanaka, not to bury him.