Yankees should provide more rest for Masahiro Tanaka 

Masahiro Tanaka pitches better with more rest, so the Yankees should accommodate him.
Masahiro Tanaka pitches better with more rest, so the Yankees should accommodate him. (Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)

All things considered, Masahiro Tanaka has pitched like an ace this season, putting to rest any lingering concerns about his elbow while offering the Yankees reason to believe they can still contend in the AL East.

As such, a rare off night for him and a 6-1 loss to the Tigers at the Stadium on Saturday ought to be easy for the Yankees to shrug off, especially after five straight wins.


Except for what continues to be a glaring issue: Tanaka needs an extra day's rest between starts the way a Maserati needs high-octane gasoline — the better to maximize his horsepower.

This isn't exactly a secret anymore, going back to Tanaka's once-a-week routine as a starter in Japan. And Joe Girardi is tired of the topic; that was obvious in his postgame press conference answering questions about it.

Before the game the manager had already made a reasonable case as to why he hasn't been able to give his ace that extra day lately while the Yankees are in a stretch of playing 40 games in 41 days. Basically, Girardi said he can't put Tanaka's needs ahead of what's best for the entire ballclub, and in theory that makes sense.

But Tanaka has been so dominant this season when pitching with extra rest, posting a 1.75 ERA over seven starts, that it's time the Yankees make an exception in his case.

If that means calling up a spot starter occasionally, so be it. Nobody uses their Triple-A team more like a football taxi squad than the Yankees anyway, shuttling players back and forth from Scranton Wilkes-Barre to keep fresh arms in the bullpen.

This would have been a good time for that, actually.

For the first time in his career, Tanaka was pitching on regular rest for a third straight start, and it showed.

Not that Tanaka was awful. You can even make the case that one pitch was all that ruined his night, when Ian Kinsler turned on a 91-mph two-seam fastball that caught way too much of the plate and blasted it for a three-run home run in the fifth inning.

Indeed, Girardi tried to make that case, and Tanaka did limit the damage by keeping the Tigers off-balance with his usual assortment of off-speed stuff.

But that would also be ignoring the help Tanaka received from his defense, as Brett Gardner and Jacoby Ellsbury each raced far into the left-center gap to turn sure hits into important outs.

The point is that Tanaka, who gave up five runs in 6 1/3 innings, didn't have his best stuff and the Tigers made him look ordinary.

Even so, the Japanese star said poor location on a couple of pitches was his only issue, and quickly dismissed a question about whether he's more comfortable pitching on extra rest. "No, not necessarily,'' he said through his interpreter.

Tanaka's expression said that he too is tired of the topic, and you can understand why since he was coming off two straight strong starts on regular four days' rest.

Joe Girardi is getting tired of answering questions about Masahiro Tanaka's rest.
Joe Girardi is getting tired of answering questions about Masahiro Tanaka's rest. (Patrick Semansky/AP)

Nevertheless, it clearly seems to catch up with him. Indeed, in three of his six starts on regular rest, Tanaka has surrendered a total of 16 runs, pitching to a 4.42 ERA, or nearly three runs higher than on extra rest. And, sure, you can argue that for $175 million, Tanaka ought to have adapted by now to the every-fifth-day rotation in the major leagues.


But if he can't, he can't. Girardi does try to build in extra days, but he explained why it didn't make sense in this long stretch without off days in the schedule.

"I know in a perfect world, or if you're in a box, it's easy to do,'' Girardi said. "But you start having to change your whole roster because you want to give an extra day's rest, and it becomes difficult.

"You call up another starting pitcher; OK, then do you short your bullpen? Or do you short your position players?

"That guy goes down and you can't call him back up for 10 days. It'd be different and it'd be easier to do if you can send a guy down for a day and bring him right back, but you can't do that. So you have to do what's best for the whole team, and that's why we do it.''

Fair enough, but the Yankees can live with sending down one of their middle relievers for 10 days if it means adding a spot starter occasionally. All the more so if Luis Severino starts to figure it out in Triple-A.

Whatever it takes to maximize every start your best pitcher makes. The good news for the Yankees is they have three off days in the next two weeks, so Tanaka will be extra-rested for his next three starts.

After that, they need to bend more to his needs. For the good of the ballclub.