Yankees beat Blue Jays as Masahiro Tanaka wins 11th
The first pitch Masahiro Tanaka threw left the ballpark. But for the next six innings, he didn't allow a Blue Jay to reach third base, let alone score.
Sounds like a dominant performance, right? Not quite.
But the Yankees rave about Tanaka's ability to make adjustments on the fly, and in his 3-1 win Tuesday night, he proved once again why he quickly has become the ace of the staff.
On a night when he struggled with his command, Tanaka navigated potential trouble and struck out 10 in six innings against one of the American League's top offenses.
Supported by a two-run home run by Brett Gardner and an RBI single by Mark Teixeira, Tanaka (11-1) gained sole possession of the major-league lead in wins. Mark Buerhle, who starts for the Blue Jays against the Yankees on Wednesday night, is 10-3.
Dellin Betances pitched perfect seventh and eighth innings, striking out three, and David Robertson got his 17th save with a scoreless ninth.
The Yankees snapped a two-game losing streak in the first of 15 consecutive games against the AL East. They trail the first-place Blue Jays by 31/2 games and have a chance to gain ground quickly, with five of their next eight games against them.
On the way to lowering his league-leading ERA to 1.99, Tanaka also delivered a firsthand lesson to Blue Jays starter and Patchogue-Medford High School product Marcus Stroman about how to make the most of your pitches on a given night.
Stroman, making his fourth major-league start and first at Yankee Stadium, dropped to 3-2 after giving up two runs in only 32/3 innings. Faced with deep counts to many hitters, the Long Islander's pitch count was at 98 when he was removed.
Tanaka faced a similar situation. The Blue Jays are at or near the top of almost every key offensive category and in the early going, they looked primed to jump on Tanaka.
Jose Reyes deposited his first pitch over the rightfield wall. Brian McCann set up on the outer half of the plate but the 91-mph fastball tailed back over the middle. As Tanaka watched the ball sail into the second row, his expression was a mix of disbelief and frustration.
Five of the next 12 Blue Jays reached base, but Tanaka refused to give in, even though he needed 38 pitches to get through two innings. Toronto stranded six runners in the first four innings, but Tanaka found his groove after that, retiring six of his final seven batters.
By that time, the Yankees had gotten to Stroman.
Pitching with a vocal group of supporters in the second deck behind third base, the 23-year-old righthander started strong but had trouble keeping his pitch count in check.
The Yankees touched him for two runs in the third as Kelly Johnson hit a one-out double and Gardner hooked a ball off the screen on the rightfield foul pole. Gardner's home run, on a 2-and-1 curve, landed in the closest part of the Stadium, where the wall sits 314 feet from home plate.
Never mind that Stroman probably pitched in ballparks with deeper corners during his career at Patchogue-Medford. Here in the Bronx, it's a home run, and the Yankees took a 2-1 lead.
The Yankees made it 3-1 in the fifth when, with lefthander Aaron Loup pitching, Derek Jeter led off with an infield hit, took second on a wild pitch, advanced to third on a groundout and scored when Teixeira lined a single to centerfield.
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