Masahiro Tanaka still dealing with elbow discomfort
By Hayden Kane
The road of inevitability continues to lead to Tommy John surgery for Masahiro Tanaka. Obviously we all hope that is not the case and that rest and rehab will be enough for Tanaka to heal his UCL injury and return to the mound for the New York Yankees, but these things don’t usually end well.
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We have a test case from as recently as last season with Matt Harvey. The rest and rehab sounds like a good idea. It is more palatable to avoid a year lost to the league’s most common arm surgery. It just doesn’t seem likely that it will work out that way. It didn’t with Harvey, and it sounds like it might not with Tanaka.
Checking in on Tanaka’s status as things stand now, general manager Brian Cashman said the following (quotes from Wallace Matthews of ESPN.com):
"Speaking on ESPN New York 98.7 FM’s “The Michael Kay Show,” Cashman gave the following update on Tanaka: “He’s improved, but he still feels it, although on a daily basis it decreases. So that’s good but it’s not good that he’s still feeling it at this stage. So it’s just day-by-day, week-by-week and we’ll adjust accordingly. It’s too early to call.”"
If Tanaka does return as the potential hero in the playoff race between now and the end of the season, his right elbow will potentially be the ticking time bomb on the Yankees’ season. It certainly seems unlikely that he would be able to return and be the same pitcher, as he was throwing his splitter an almost historical amount of the time. Would his arm be able to take that strain in the heat of a playoff race?
That remains to be seen, if he is even given that chance. Otherwise, we are staring down the possibility of Tanaka being out for the entirety of the 2015 season.