Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka To Miss Wednesday’s Start Agianst Blue Jays

Ivan Nova, who was recently relegated to bullpen duty, will get the start in the absence of Tanaka.

If Tanaka is truly to miss just one start, then this does not signal the end of the season for the Yankees.

Adam Warren and rookie Luis Severino, slated to start the first two games of the Blue Jays series, were sent ahead to get some rest instead of flying overnight following Sunday night’s game against the Mets.

The good news the New York Yankees received prior to arriving at Citi Field on Sunday afternoon was cancelled out by the bad news manager Joe Girardi delivered at the opening of his pre-game press conference.

Nova’s last start was his worst of the season.

Tanaka’s line for the season sits at 12-7 with a 3.38 ERA in 149 innings. “But I’ve often said that one of the reasons they are successful is the competitive nature inside of them and they understand the importance of runs, and it’s just hard”. Tanaka said he felt the discomfort pushing out of the batter’s box, though he continued to pitch through the tightness through the sixth inning of a 5-1 Mets win.

“It’s frustrating because I feel like I had a good year”, Shreve said after the Yankees fell 4 1/2 games behind the Toronto Blue Jays in the American League East. “There’s no time to make it up now”.

Tanaka convinced the team that tightness was not necessarily a problem, and he pitched five more innings before being lifted for a pinch hitter in the seventh.

“It’s frustrating“, Girardi said. This time, “I’m not looking at it as something very serious“, he said. “I think that helps”, Nova said. In August, when Sabathia landed on the disabled list with knee inflammation, Brendan Kuty of NJ Advance Media questioned whether he’d ever pitch again. After Justin Wilson walked Daniel Murphy to load the bases he struck out David Wright, and Juan Uribe who pinched hit for a suddenly hot Lucas Duda, and that started a string of seven straight Mets going down by strikeout of which four came from Wilson.

“You get concerned whenever your pitcher has to hit”, Girardi said. “Going in there two behind sounds better than three, that’s for sure, when you start talking about the loss column”. You try to do everything you can to keep them from getting hurt.

“I didn’t really know until I came in to (the clubhouse) to watch my (third-inning) at-bat, ” Carlos Beltran said.