There was no guarantee the splitter or slider would have hung and allowed Mike Napoli to break Masahiro Tanaka’s heart.
Yet, when Tanaka shook off catcher Brian McCann’s calls for the filthy splitter then the biting slider to go with a fastball with two outs, the bases empty and the score tied in the ninth, the Yankees’ ace was leaving himself wide open for the almighty second guess.
And when the right-handed-hitting Napoli took a fastball the other way and over the right-field fence, the Red Sox were on the way to a pulsating 2-1 victory that was witnessed by a sold-out Yankee Stadium crowd of 48,433.
“He called for a splitter and a slider and I shook off both,’’ Tanaka said through a translator, after looking stunned that Napoli hit a 1-2, 96 mph fastball on the outside corner into the right-field seats. “I just wanted to go hard outside.’’
Tanaka’s plan was to set up Napoli, who fanned on a 91 mph splitter in the fourth and an 88 mph slider in the sixth, for a breaking ball at 2-1. Instead, the count never got even.
“At the end of the day it was 96 on the black and he barreled it up,’’ McCann said. “There is no wrong pitch for Tanaka. He is in full control of what he does and it was a great pitching performance.’’
Television cameras and audio picked up Napoli questioning Tanaka’s intelligence.
“What an idiot, he struck me out with sliders,’’ said Napoli as he approached the dugout.
Tanaka’s brilliant outing, in which he allowed two runs and seven hits in nine innings, was matched by Red Sox lefty Jon Lester, who allowed an unearned run and five hits in eight innings before Koji Uehara hurled a perfect ninth for his 17th save to stop the Yankees’ two-game winning streak.
Having made eight previous starts in the hitter-friendly Stadium, Tanaka had to know the danger of challenging a hitter with opposite-field power in that spot.
“Obviously it’s a rather small stadium, those things happen,’’ said Tanaka, who has lost two straight for the first time in the U.S. and is 11-3. The other Red Sox run came on David Ross’s one-out homer to left in the third.
Tanaka might blame himself for the Yankees remaining two games back of the AL East-leading Blue Jays, but that would be wrong. After getting blanked in Tanaka’s previous outing, the Yankees have scored one run in two games for their ace.
Held without a hit by Lester (9-7) through five innings, the Yankees scored a run in the third thanks to a fielding error by shortstop Stephen Drew. Three singles in the sixth didn’t lead to a run because Brett Gardner was thrown out attempting to steal second.
With Lester gone after eight innings, the Yankees had Carlos Beltran, Alfonso Soriano and McCann scheduled to hit in the ninth.
The frigid Beltran (6-for-35) whiffed in front of pinch-hitter Ichiro Suzuki lining out to center field. McCann ended the game 0-for-4 by striking out for the second time.
Tanaka said he shakes off McCann “from time to time’’ but couldn’t recall how many times he did Saturday night. All he knew was that the homer was the difference.
“I gave up the home run and that was the worst think I could have possibly done,’’ Tanaka said.