http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/16/sports/baseball/masahiro-tanaka-ny-yankees.html 2016-09-16 03:00:33 After Daunting Departures, the Yankees’ Ace Finally Arrived No pitcher has started more wins for his team this season than Masahiro Tanaka. He has pitched his best since the Yankees traded away four stalwarts. === BOSTON — The Cessa and Mitchell have combined for 10 starts in the majors, never getting an out beyond the sixth inning. Sabathia has pitched better lately but has a 4.50 E.R.A. since the All-Star break. Michael Pineda, the Yankees’ other starter, is notoriously inconsistent. In other words: Imagine this team without Tanaka. This series is surprisingly relevant for many reasons, but Tanaka is a big one. The Yankees traded four stalwarts before the Aug. 1 nonwaiver deadline, but no new arrival has been more important than the ace-level version of Tanaka. As the Yankees stirred to life in the pennant race, Tanaka has carried them. He lost his start at Citi Field on Aug. 2, but as he took the mound on Thursday, he was 6-0 with a 1.94 E.R.A. since then. The Yankees have won all seven of his starts in that stretch, and 22 of his 29 this season. No pitcher in the majors has started more victories for his team this season; Jon Lester of the Chicago Cubs and Rick Porcello of the Red Sox had also started 22 team wins. They had more personal victories to show for it (20 for Porcello and 17 for Lester), but few pitchers have been better lately than Tanaka. “I think it’s just that time of year,” Sabathia said. “It’s not surprising. Every year around this time, he gets hot. That’s what the good pitchers do: get better as the season goes on. You feel good with your stuff, you get locked into the season, the games matter.” Tanaka was rolling late last year, with a 2.60 E.R.A. in eight starts before straining his right hamstring while running out a bunt in September at Citi Field. He took 11 days off, made a five-inning start against the Red Sox and took the mound for the wild-card game against Houston. He lasted five innings, gave up two homers and lost. Even so, Tanaka was the best option for the Yankees then, as he is now. His splitter remains one of the most devastating weapons in the game, helping explain why opponents had swung at 36.3 percent of his pitches outside the strike zone before Thursday. That was the highest chase rate in the majors, and according to Fangraphs, only one starter — the Los Angeles Angels’ Matt Shoemaker — uses the splitter more often. Recently, Gary Sanchez has been catching Tanaka’s starts. Tanaka was 11-0 before this series when working with Austin Romine or Sanchez, who has handled his last six games, including on Thursday. Sanchez’s offense has slipped since he was American League player of the month in August (his September average, before Thursday, was .195), but his catching has been sound. “Tanaka trusts him,” said the Yankees coach Tony Pena, who caught for 18 seasons in the majors. “The catcher and pitcher have to be on the same page, and it seems like they are. He’s doing really good in general, the way he has grown up in all phases of the game.” Pena continued: “He realizes how important it is for a catcher to have the pitcher depending on him. He puts a lot of emphasis, a lot of work on it, to try to remember everything. It’s not easy to call a game, but so far he’s doing a great job, and he’s going to get better and better with time. He asks a lot of questions, and that’s what you’re looking for.” The Yankees need Sanchez to be a high-impact hitter again, and the rush to anoint the Baby Bombers as superstars is risky. Tyler Austin and Aaron Judge made a historic entrance — no teammates had ever hit back-to-back homers in their first career plate appearances — but have struggled since then. Austin arrived at Fenway with a .200 average and a .246 on-base percentage. Judge’s season is over with a right oblique strain, and he will enter the winter with a .179 average, a .263 on-base percentage and strikeouts in half of his at-bats (42 of 84). The Yankees will continue to fight — Manager Joe Girardi’s recent teams have tended to outperform their expected record, based on run differential — but they had lost three of four before this series. Not coincidentally, those were the four games since Tanaka last started. They needed him badly at Fenway. “This stretch of six or seven games, he’s probably been as good as he’s been at any point,” Girardi said. Tanaka has been good enough to make the worries about the partial tear in his ulnar collateral ligament disappear. That diagnosis cost him two and a half months in his first Yankees season, 2014, and other injuries held him to 24 starts last season. This is Tanaka at his best, the pitcher the Yankees have been waiting for: sturdy and dependable, not yet 28 years old and signed through 2020, unless he opts out after next season. The Yankees would be lost without him.