So, how did Masahiro Tanaka’s first day at Spring Training practice go?
Saturday was the first day of workouts for Yankees pitchers and catchers, and a huge crowd was in attendance to see the Yankees’ biggest off season acquisition warmup.
About 150 media members (mostly Japanese) were spectators as Tanaka threw 32 pitches to catcher Francisco Cervelli in a bullpen session.
Overall the day proved quite promising, the only real standout moment coming after Tanaka’s conditioning run, which consisted of 4 laps around the field–the equal of almost one mile. Tanaka grimaced in pain throughout and when asked about it he said by way of interpreter:
“Probably what I’ll remember was the four laps that we did at the end. That was pretty hard.”
“Just the running part, that was really hard for me today,” Tanaka said. “I actually didn’t know that I was going to run this much. And I’m a little bit of a slow runner, so that part I really can’t help.”
The conditioning run was the last activity in a day jammed full of typical Spring Training workouts. The complaints should mostly be laughed off–after all Tanaka was signed for his arms not his legs.