TAMPA — The Braves know pitching and nearly all of them gave Masahiro Tanaka a four-star review Sunday.
This was the first real spring training test for Tanaka because the Braves brought their A-team to Steinbrenner Field.
“This guy has pitched in some big-time games, some big stages,’’ Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez said. “It’s not like he just came out of Oneonta. He’s going to be on a big stage in New York, but I don’t think that’s going to be a problem.’’
“Tanaka, he looked good,’’ said first baseman Freddie Freeman, who injured his thumb and had to leave the game after one at-bat, but that vantage point gave him a good view of the Japanese right-hander.
“That split-finger he’s got, it’s a good pitch,’’ Freeman said. “It’s a swing-and-miss pitch. He spots up his fastball. I was watching it on TV when I came out of the game. He’s able to go in and out, and he can throw it for a strike and also get you to chase on it. He looked real good today.”
Tanaka was not blowing away the radar gun, his fastball sat around 90, but he was effective as he pitched 4 ¹/₃ innings, surrendering three hits, one run, two walks while getting six strikeouts in the Yankees’ 7-4 win.
Jason Heyward was the one Brave not overly impressed, saying Tanaka had “mix-and-match stuff.’’ Asked if anything particularly impressed him, Heyward said it wasn’t like seeing “Aroldis Chapman throwing 99 from the left side come out of the pen.’’
Remember, it’s in a hitter’s DNA to be not too praiseworthy when it comes to pitchers.
“He’s another pitcher,’’ Heyward said, “somebody you are going to have to compete against. He’s got a lot of pitches, you want to be patient with him, get a good pitch to hit and not hit what he wants you to hit.’’
That figures to be the approach against Tanaka.
Eight of the Braves’ nine starters were major leaguers and second baseman Tommy La Stella, who is from St. Joseph Regional High School in Montvale, NJ, has a major league future. He was the one Brave who barreled up the baseball, hitting a double off the top of the left-field wall in the fourth.
“He’s not throwing the ball 100 miles per hour but his stuff is definitely effective and definitely blends well, he’s pretty tough,’’ said La Stella, who grew up a Yankee and Derek Jeter fan. “He can command all his pitches. Any time you got a guy like that he is going to be tough to hit. He kept us off balance. He pitched backwards.’’
Praised B.J. Upton, “His off-speed stuff you couldn’t pick up spin on it because he keeps the same arm action. He looked pretty good to me. He reminds me of Dice-K, moving the ball, the splitter.’’
“I saw a bunch of different pitches that he threw over the plate,’’ Gonzalez said. “You see videos all the time, but I was impressed.’’
Tanaka Time gets more interesting with each start.