Yes, the Yankees are in first place 43 games into the season, and Masahiro Tanaka is pitching like Cy Young, but the overall starting pitching situation remains a major problem and must be fixed or the Yankees are not going anywhere.
Three-fifths of their rotation is injured and the news on CC Sabathia continues to be unsettling.
Sabathia showed up Sunday at Yankee Stadium on a day the Yankees should have swept the Pirates. But after winning the first game, 4-3, behind a shaky Hiroki Kuroda, Vidal Nuno and Alfredo Aceves served up home run balls to Starling Marte and Josh Harrison in the sixth and seventh innings to lift the Pirates to a 5-3 victory in the second game, a lifeless affair that was witnessed by only several thousand fans of what was the original announced crowd of 46,858.
Give the Yankees credit for entering Monday’s off day at 23-20, and with Tanaka going Tuesday against the Cubs at Wrigley Field, you might as well post another victory onto the win total. But
the Yankees need to find starting pitching help and fast to avoid a blowout along the AL East highway.
There is too much at stake and not enough arms in the system.
The news on Sabathia gets more mysterious by the day. Sabathia received a cortisone shot and stem cell injection this week in his right knee. The Yankees are waiting to see how the knee responds. The clubhouse was not open between games and Sabathia was long gone by the time reporters entered.
“I think he’s going to see the doctor [Monday] and they are going to try to get a game plan,” Joe Girardi said. “How he moves forward from here, is it a 15-day DL? It’s going to be more than that.
“When we get him back I don’t think any of us really know because this is not something that is done very often. You look at Michael’s [Pineda] injury and there is a lot of data behind that one to give you an idea it’s going to be about six weeks. CC’s there’s not.’’
And what will Sabathia be when he does return from his degenerative knee issues? No one really knows.
Girardi and the Yankees had won four straight before losing the second game. While the rest of the AL East limps along, the Yankees have won seven of the last 12.
But letting that second game get away was painful.
“Kuroda did his job and we won the first game,’’ said Girardi, who also praised Nuno’s performance.
Nuno lasted six innings, allowing six hits, three runs, two earned, but by the sixth inning, the Pirates were on to him. After Gaby Sanchez ripped a long fly out to center, Marte, who struck out
four times in the opener, went with a pitch and drilled a two-run home run to right to give the Pirates a 3-2 lead.
“I went cutter away,” Nuno said, “and I left it a little up.’’
Anywhere up is a danger zone for Nuno.
All in all, this was not a baseball clinic, but it’s what baseball has become these days.
“You have to always look at the big picture in a sense,’’ Girardi said. “You win four out of the last five games and of course you get greedy when you win the first two games of a series and you got a chance to win the third game, but we’ll move on and we’ll go to Chicago.’’
The Yankees are just trying to survive this stretch of the troubled waters rotation.
Tanaka, who said before Game 1 he always aspires to pitch a complete game, has been their salvation, but he is going to need help. Like that car insurance commercial, everybody knows that, especially with Sabathia’s degenerative knee condition.
The Yankees’ weak rotation cannot continue to walk the razor’s edge. That is a degenerative condition.