Two months into the season, Masahiro Tanaka is a front-runner for AL Rookie of the Year, Cy Young and to start the All-Star Game.
Can we add MVP to the discussion, too?
Generally, I think it runs the borderline between difficult and impossible to make a case for a starter who will appear in 30-ish games to win this award. But if you believe Tanaka is merely impacting his games, you are not watching the 2014 Yankees.
For the Yanks would already be near playoff extinction already without Tanaka, which makes him invaluable and, perhaps, “Most Valuable.”
It is not just that the Yankees win when Tanaka pitches (9-2). It is that his workhorse genius — emphasis on workhorse — has empowered Joe Girardi to use the strength of this team, the late-inning pen, aggressively and early when the Yanks have a chance to win.
Tanaka is the lone Yankees starter who gets deep into games, meaning rest or short outings for relievers being otherwise overtaxed. The day before or after a Tanaka start, Girardi can be reasonably confident he can boldly use his pen since Tanaka will not need such a crutch.
Consider this: Chase Whitley has made four starts as a Yankee, each the game after a Tanaka outing. In the outings before Whitley’s starts, Tanaka has pitched six innings (his shortest of the year in his lone loss), 6 ²/₃ innings, eight innings and nine innings. As a result, Girardi had plenty of pen left the following day to rescue Whitley, whom the Yankees do not seem to think can navigate a lineup a third time through.
Whitley lasted 4 ²/₃ innings, 4 ¹/₃ innings and five innings in his first three starts, yet the Yanks won each. Whitley managed just five innings in his fourth start on Sunday, and the Yankees would have won again had David Robertson not melted in the ninth. The key to each win was having a rested/effective pen.
Yankees starters rank 24th in the majors in innings, and that is with Tanaka averaging nearly 7 ¹/₃ innings a start (only Cincinnati’s Johnny Cueto, at almost 7 ²/₃ ranks higher). Girardi has needed to use the pen too much anyway — subtract Tanaka and you would have a relief corps on fumes already.
So when it comes to Most Valuable Players does any of this context matter? Do you just look at stats — whether they be old-fashioned batting average and RBIs or modern ones such as WAR and Win Probability Added — and whoever leads your favorites gets the vote? Or do you try to interpret whether the stats tell a full story about how valuable a player is to winning?
Those who believe deeply in the modern stats would, I believe, say they are trying to eliminate what they would view as adding subjective narratives to the numbers. After all, you can form a story around just about any player to bolster the meaning of the stats. For example, Texas’ Yu Darvish is doing something akin to Tanaka — pitching long and superbly into games to support an otherwise ruined rotation.
I understand the argument. But my counter is that we either have to work to understand the context or find better formulas to fully appreciate — numerically, anyway — what an ace such as Tanaka or Darvish is doing beyond the games he pitches. For Tanaka was valuable when the season began, but only has grown in value — has become invaluable, really — with each injury to Ivan Nova,
Michael Pineda and CC Sabathia.
The Yankees have had 34 starts of six innings or more and Tanaka has 11. He has seven of the 13 starts of seven innings or more — and Sabathia with two is the only other Yankee with more than one. He has completed at least eight innings three times, the only Yankee to do that. Or how about this: Tanaka has recorded 38 outs after the sixth inning, and the rest of the rotation has combined for 26.
Tanaka is winning his games and saving the bullpen to give the Yankees a chance to win other games. Is that Most Valuable?
Twins seeing a fall from Mauer
The Twins took two of three at Yankee Stadium having received just two singles in 13 at-bats with five strikeouts from Joe Mauer. In the short run, that shows positive resourcefulness for the club. But the problem is Mauer is now one-third of the way into his first season as a full-time first baseman, but hitting like a disposable middle infielder. And the bigger problem is he is not even halfway through his eight-year, $184 million contract until after this season.
When Minnesota signed a native son to such a large deal, it understood he probably would not catch for the life of the contract. But due to concussions — and possibly failing defense as well — Mauer was permanently moved from behind the plate.
Obviously, an .873 OPS (Mauer’s career mark heading into this season) at catcher is far more advantageous than at first base. Still, it is acceptable at first. But Mauer is at .700 this season, and Minnesota has the second-worst OPS among first basemen in the AL — and the worst, the Astros, signed prospect Jon Singleton to a five-year contract Monday and promoted him to the majors. There is no Plan B for Minnesota, not with that sized contract remaining.
“He’s 31 now, and I think you are seeing a decline phase,” one executive said. “They obviously did not invest that kind of money to get a player like Mark Grace, but that is what they just might have.”
Mauer is striking out and hitting the ball on the ground more than in this past — in fact, this is the fourth straight year his strikeout percentage has increased slightly.
Perhaps this is age, the wear and tear of catching and, perhaps, the lingering impact of concussions diminishing Mauer. But he has a bit of a David Wright syndrome, too — the face of the franchise having a home stadium built that hurt his production. Mauer was never a huge home-run hitter, albeit for 2009 (28). But since huge Target Field opened in 2010, he has 35 homers in 2,287 plate appearances. He has 12 homers at Target in 274 games or one more than Toronto’s Jose Bautista has in 14 games as a visitor.
As a player personnel man said, “Ever since the move to Target Field and the extra 10-15 feet in the left-center gap, his power slot, the power has gone south.”
Now the question is, has his whole game gone in that direction, too?
Jedd Gyorko hit 23 homers last season — 13 at cavernous Petco Park (tied for the third-most ever produced there in a season). That got him into the NL Rookie of the Year conversation and moved the Padres to give the second baseman a six-year, $35.1 million contract in the offseason.
Now, he can make history — and not the good kind.
Before Monday, the righty had a .489 OPS. Since divisional play began in 1969 — the year the Padres joined the majors — the lowest OPS ever produced by a player who qualified for the batting title was .502 by Milwaukee’s Tim Johnson in 1973.
Now, Padres officials are wondering if the homers have turned him too pull conscious and stopped him from using the whole field, and if a minor league stint will be necessary to give him both a mental break and a chance to fix the swing flaws.