Yankees: Masahiro Tanaka Shines With Fourth Career Shutout Against Rays
Yankees fans can rejoice, it looks like their team is stabilizing after Tanaka pitched a complete game and shut out against the Rays Monday night.
This is the New York Yankees pitcher Masahiro Tanaka‘s fourth career shut out. In fact, he pitched one just last year on July 24th against the Tampa Bay Rays as well.
In the process, Tanaka even managed to tie Hall of Fame pitcher Mike Mussina’s shutout record.
Masahiro Tanaka is the first @Yankees pitcher to toss a shutout with 2 H or fewer and 10+ Ks since Mike Mussina in 2002. pic.twitter.com/7hxTgVXQ3H
— MLB Stats (@MLBStats) June 18, 2019
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Tanaka showed that he had control until the fourth inning, Austin Meadows shot a hit to right and Willy Adames hit a single in the fifth. However, with 111 pitches, he used 76 of them to strikeout their rivals.
The right-handed pitcher has an overall career ERA of 3.56 and an ERA of 3.23 just in 2019. Tanaka has been a Yankee since 2014 and they signed him to a seven-year contract.
Fresh off paternity leave, Tanaka seems to have the power and drive to really help the Yankees succeed. This comes as a pillar of strength to Yankee fans who were worried about the teams pitching situation. GM Brian Cashman says that pitching is now his number one priority in this new press conference provided by YES network.
Some fans were worried understandably when Cashman made a trade for Edwin Encarnacion from the Seattle Mariners. Encarnacion made his debut on Monday night at Yankee stadium with an 0-4. Though he is a power home run hitter and he is currently leading the league in runs (21), that was not shown tonight. It’s likely that Cashman didn’t know how long Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton would be injured because they both equally give at least thirty home runs a season.
They also have pitcher Luis Severino coming back after the All Star break as well as Dellin Betances in July.
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This huge win also puts the Yankees back on top in the American League East by one and a half games.