The Yankees arrived in The Bronx on Saturday still bleary-eyed after a marathon loss to the Rays that stretched into Saturday morning.
Though it was just Masahiro Tanaka’s sixth major league start, his teammates were pleased to know the rookie would be on the mound.
While he was far from his best in a 9-3 win, Tanaka already has made believers of the Yankees.
“He was the same old guy,” Mark Teixeira said. “Getting outs.”
After their nearly six-hour marathon on Friday night/Saturday morning resulted in an overtaxed bullpen, Tanaka overcame another sluggish start and tossed 113 pitches in seven innings to improve to 4-0, as the Yankees overcame a three-run deficit to avoid a fourth straight defeat.
Kelly Johnson capped the comeback with a homer off Josh Lueke to lead off the bottom of the sixth and put the Yankees up 4-3.
“Maybe we had to shake the cobwebs off,” Johnson said of the lineup, which was held hitless in the first three innings by Tampa Bay starter Jake Odorizzi (1-4), who entered with a 6.85 ERA.
That changed in a hurry when Jacoby Ellsbury started the fourth with a single.
After Brett Gardner grounded into a forceout, Teixeira got the Yankees on the board with a two-run homer to right to cut the deficit to 3-2.
It was Teixeira’s fourth homer in his last five games after returning from a hamstring injury.
They added a run to tie the game at 3-3 an inning later, but unlike Friday night, the offense was finally was able to bust open.
“We got hits [Friday], but you have to score runs,” Teixeira said. “Numbers don’t mean anything if you don’t put them across the plate. You saw what we did today and Derek [Jeter] and Carlos [Beltran] had the day off.”
Tanaka settled down after the fourth and allowed just one baserunner the rest of his outing, which he barely survived.
In the second, David DeJesus lined a ball of Tanaka’s left ankle, sending him to the ground. Then in the sixth, he was nearly decapitated by James Loney’s line drive. Tanaka was able to get a glove on the ball to avoid getting hit.
“It just happened so quickly so it’s really hard for me to say [what happened],” Tanaka said through an interpreter. “But I thought that it was on the side of my head.”
His good fortune helped him last until the seventh and Dellin Betances and Preston Claiborne were able to finish the game.
“I was aware that I needed to go as long as I could,” Tanaka said.
Needing 43 pitches to get through the first two innings, that prospect didn’t look good, as Tanaka still hasn’t been able to maneuver through the opening parts of games without finding trouble.
“I wish that I could be better at the beginning of the games, but I really don’t know,” Tanaka said.
Girardi will take the results, though.
The manager was even going to send Tanaka back out to start the eighth if the Yankees didn’t have a long half-inning in the bottom of the seventh.
“We can score runs as long as we hit with runners in scoring position,” Teixeira said. “We may not hit as many home runs as we have in the past, but we can score runs a lot of different ways.”
With Tanaka pitching, they usually don’t have to score too many.