Is it time for the Yankees to panic about Tanaka and Sabathia?

Is it panic time in New York, or is it too early to worry about the Yankees’ starting pitchers?

One week of the baseball season is in the books, which means it’s time to start wildly overreacting to everything that happens. The Kansas City Royals will go undefeated! Adrian Gonzalez will hit 300 home runs! Trevor Bauer won’t allow a hit all year!

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The fact is opening week doesn’t mean any more than any other week of the season. There’s this thing called “small sample size,” and we’ll probably have to keep mentioning it until around Memorial Day. (Remember that April when Chris Shelton hit all those home runs? He was in the minors by the end of the year).

However, there are some things we can learn from the first week of baseball: whether players are healthy, and whether trends from last year or from the spring are likely to continue.

The New York Yankees face a couple of these questions regarding starting pitchers Masahiro Tanaka and CC Sabathia. Both have begun the season with troubling results, after springs marked by uncertainty, or in Sabathia’s case, seasons.

Will these pitchers be what they once were? Is it time to panic? Or should we just wait and see?

Let’s take a look at each of them, and come to a conclusion on whether the Yankees should be panicking, or just waiting it out.

Sep 21, 2014; Bronx, NY, USA; New York Yankees starting pitcher Masahiro Tanaka (19) deliverers a pitch against Yankee Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Noah K. Murray-USA TODAY Sports /

Masahiro Tanaka

One of the biggest stories of the brief season has been the struggles of the Yankees’ Masahiro Tanaka. The pitcher came over from Japan last year and immediately pitched like one of MLB’s best pitchers, posting a 2.77 ERA and striking out more than a batter per inning. Last July Tanaka suffered a torn UCL, but rather than undergo Tommy John surgery, Tanaka rested the arm and returned to the mound in September.

In between the nonstop talk about A-Rod, Tanaka was the talk of Yankees’ camp; his velocity was down, and many wondered what kind of season he could have, and whether it was a mistake to forego the Tommy John surgery.

His first start of the season confirmed those fears. Tanaka shied away from his fastball on Opening Day against the Blue Jays, relying almost exclusively on off speed pitches and paying for it against Toronto’s lineup of power hitters. That resulted in five runs allowed and Tanaka getting pulled after the fourth inning. For the season (which, yes, is only two starts), he has allowed five walks and two home runs in just nine innings.

If it were just two starts with no prior worries we could write this off as a blip on the radar, but it’s not. This is what Yankees fans and management feared when Tanaka announced his intention to attempt a return without surgery. We’ve seen players have the surgery, then come back and be every bit the pitcher they were before; just look at Adam Wainwright or Stephen Strasburg, to name just two.

We haven’t seen anyone do what Tanaka’s doing.

The worry for the Yankees is that if Tanaka pitches poorly this year and decides he needs the surgery, he’ll end up missing a good chunk of the 2016 season when they are more likely to be competitive.

Now this could all be nothing, and it may just take time for Tanaka to get back on track. The loss of velocity and his avoidance of the fastball are worrying. Off-speed pitches only work as a change of pace from the fastball; if the batter never thinks the fastball’s coming, he’s not going to be fooled by a changeup or a slider.

According to FanGraphs’ data, Tanaka threw only 28 fastballs out of 82 pitches against the Blue Jays, for a rate of 35%; the lowest fastball rate in the past four years belongs to the Rays’ Alex Cobb in 2013, with 42%.

Tanaka can succeed like this: he’s striking guys out, and his splitter, in particular, continues to be a weapon. Will he be what he once was? It’s too early to say, but the Yankees should probably start to be concerned.

Verdict: Concern

May 4, 2014; Bronx, NY, USA; New York Yankees starting pitcher CC Sabathia (52) after the first inning against the Tampa Bays Rays at Yankee Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Robert Deutsch-USA TODAY Sports /

CC Sabathia

Now let’s turn to New York’s other ace.

Unlike Tanaka, Sabathia did not pitch like an ace last year. In fact, he turned in what was easily the worst season of his career, posting a 5.28 ERA in just eight starts before getting hurt. This came after another disappointing season in 2013, which saw a high ERA and reduced velocity.

Sabathia’s fastball velocity averaged just 88.4 mph against Toronto, after getting back over 90 mph in his spring debut.

This is Sabathia’s 15th MLB season, and it may be that all the innings – 2,827 of them – have caught up to him. The fact that his decline started in 2013 is the most worrying thing about this. This isn’t just a bad start, it’s the continuation of a trend that started two seasons ago. With fastball velocity under 90 mph, and sharply increased home run rates since 2012, there’s just no way that the Yankees can expect Sabathia to be an ace anymore.

He may surprise us this year, but this feels like the slow decline of a once-great pitcher.

Verdict: Panic

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Is it time for the Yankees to panic about Masahiro Tanaka and CC Sabathia?

By Stanford Crissey | Apr 13, 2015

Is it panic time in New York, or is it too early to worry about the Yankees’ starting pitchers?

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