TAMPA — Ivan Nova strode to the mound and it was if the lights had gone on in a bar in the wee hours. You don’t have to go home, but you can’t stay here.
Media retreated, coaches and personnel turned their backs or dispersed. The red carpet-ish soundtrack of the morning— the click, click of cameras — dissipated.
This was not, of course, a statement about Nova, who was simply beginning one of the routines of spring training — throwing a live bullpen session. There will be hundreds here and elsewhere. Yet, the previous session — the first in this uniform, in this country — by Masahiro Tanaka was a main event.
Now, trying to discern information based on a batting-practice session in February is akin to gauging what kind of basketball player someone is off of a layup line. Yet, we have one population at Steinbrenner Field — Yankees personnel and American media — attempting to demystify Tanaka, and scores of Japanese reporters covering a story so huge back home that it has led to them essentially ignoring the presence of three of Japan’s biggest stars — Hideki Matsui (a guest coach), Ichiro Suzuki and Hiroki Kuroda — to do so.
At this moment all that is available are crumbs, small insights, at least until exhibition games, then regular season games. Which is why there was more attention on a Feb. 21 early morning bullpen session than the Astros might get in June. It is all we have for now to try to surmise why the Yankees invested $175 million on the right-hander.
Joe Girardi, Larry Rothschild and Tanaka’s interpreter were behind a cage at the back of the mound. Brian Cashman and a phalanx of executives and coaches were stationed behind the batting cage. And the kind of media assemblage that might greet a head of state eyeballed the 25-pitch affair to glean something, anything.
Brian McCann, who caught Tanaka’s session, was surrounded at his locker afterward and — affable to this point as a Yankee — answered tersely and with a body language that suggested a desire to be elsewhere.
When I asked him about that later in the day, he admitted wanting to watch what he said because, “I didn’t want to make too much of it. I mean it was great for a live bullpen, just as advertised, better even than I saw on the video I studied, but still it was just a live bullpen session.”
Yes, just a live bullpen session against four players — Austin Romine, Adonis Garcia, Antoan Richardson and Ramon Flores — likely to be arrayed in Trenton and Scranton in six weeks. Tanaka had not faced a hitter since Nov. 3, when he struck out Yomiuiri’s Kenji Yano to save Game 7 of the Japan Series a day after he had thrown a 160-pitch, complete-game loss in Game 6 for his eventual champion Rakuten squad. Tanaka guess-timated he was throwing at about 70 percent effort.
So what could be learned at that capacity?
Tanaka takes his work seriously. He was tunnel vision, paying no heed to the attention, mentioning he was used to getting plenty of it back home. Though there were no actual runners stationed, Tanaka treated pitches from the stretch as the real deal, changing his hold times and cadences as if trying to disrupt the work of a base stealer.
Tanaka came with the reputation as having, perhaps, the best splitter in the world and what impressed the onlookers was that it deceptively came with not only late dip, but from the arm angle and arm speed of his fastball.
Romine said: “I’ve never seen a ball move like that before. It’s special.” Rothschild said 10 days of observation has left him impressed by the life and movement on the pitches, and the unflappable nature of the man.
Tanaka is due to throw at least one more BP session and make six spring starts. Each outing will deepen the knowledge. Girardi and Rothschild will both eye how he handles going every five days (pitchers generally start once a week in Japan). Girardi acknowledged the potential value in splitting Tanaka and Kuroda since they have similarities in their deliveries and repertoire.
Nevertheless, Tanaka’s ability to pitch more often is what Girardi/Rothschild want to see because the Yankees have a tough season-opening schedule — 13 games in a row without a day off to open, 19 games in 20 days and 34 games in 37 days. If Kuroda starts Game 2 and Tanaka Game 4, Tanaka would miss Boston in a home-and-home series in April and — assuming the Yankees give him an extra day before his first outing — Tanaka would start on five days’ rest in four of his first six starts.
Such decisions, though, are still in the distance, still far from settled. For now, Tanaka appreciates “getting into the rhythm” of new surroundings, new ways of doing things. Little by little, we learn more about him. One batting practice pitch at a time.