TAMPA — Yankees pitching coach Larry Rothschild has been impressed by Masahiro Tanaka’s stuff, but he’s also impressed with his makeup.
“I’ve watched a lot of tape and I had that one conversation with him and have emailed back and forth with his interpreter,’’ Rothschild said Tuesday at the Yankees’ minor league complex. “We signed him because he has good stuff and he can command the ball and he is a good competitor.’’
Rothschild was part of the Yankees contingent that met with Tanaka in Los Angeles.
“It was good. We had nine people there,’’ Rothschild said, “and he wasn’t in a position to talk a lot, but you could tell that he was interested in the whole process and knew what he was after.’’
From watching video, Rothschild already has picked out a few key pieces of information.
“You can tell from the body language, there is competitiveness,’’ Rothschild said. “And that’s huge. The intangibles are big when you are trying to win games. I don’t care where you pitch, you don’t do what he’s done without having that in place, and you can actually see it when you watch him pitch.
“The command of the fastball is good. The split is very good — you can tell on tape some, but you need to see the split in person to see the real action on it. The slider is good too. He’s got some weapons.’’
As for the workload, Tanaka will not be having 160-pitch outings with the Yankees, but Rothschild said, “I want him to start games thinking he is going to finish games. The adjustments are he’s going to be pitching every fifth day, the parks, the baseball. There’s going to be adjustments he has to make, but he is committed to doing that and he has been throwing with the MLB baseball for quite a long time. He’s got the presence of mind to know what he needs to do when he gets here.’’
Every aspect of Tanaka will be analyzed.
Fans who can’t wait until April to see why the Yankees paid $175 million to get Tanaka will get a chance to watch one of his starts from last year on Monday, when the YES Network televises Rakuten’s June 9, 2013 game against Yomiuri.
John Flaherty watched that game, when Tanaka threw seven scoreless innings and came away impressed.
“All you heard this offseason was that he had that splitter, but that his fastball was kind of straight,” said Flaherty, a former Yankees catcher who now works as an analyst for YES. “The fastball had more movement than I thought it would.”
Still, Flaherty said he believes the 25-year-old can make some improvements.
“He’s got kind of a big, looping curveball,” Flaherty said by phone. “He’s got great control, but I’d like to see him get more aggressive instead of getting behind in counts.”
Though Flaherty liked the famous splitter, he thought Tanaka could learn something from Hiroki Kuroda.
“Kuroda can throw the split for a strike and then throw one in the dirt to strike a guy out,” Flaherty said. “I didn’t see the get-ahead split from Tanaka. But overall, he was a more complete pitcher than I expected to see.”
Derek Jeter went through another solid workout, taking six rounds in the batting cage (48 swings) and taking 32 ground balls in the infield.