Wallace Matthews, ESPN Staff Writer 8y

Yankees will get to the wild-card game, but how much further?

NEW YORK -- Barring some unforeseen circumstances, like a hurricane that wipes out the three-game season finale in Baltimore this weekend, the odds are the New York Yankees will win one more game and clinch their first playoff berth since 2012. They probably will even win two more games and insure that the one-game wild-card playoff is at Yankee Stadium next Tuesday. That much really should not be in doubt.

What is very much in doubt is whether they can win that playoff game, and if they do, how far they can really go this October.

Because once again, the Yankees' offense looked lifeless in losing 9-5 to the Boston Red Sox -- their third straight loss -- in 11 innings Wednesday night. And once again, the bullpen, aside from Andrew Miller and Justin Wilson, looked shaky and (at least one member of it) sounded even worse.

And for the first time, there was real reason to doubt whether Masahiro Tanaka will be up to the task his team will require of him on Tuesday.

Let's take those points one at a time.

With the door wide open for the Yankees to waltz through and claim a wild-card berth, the their offense was unable to do a whole lot of damage to Wade Miley, a pitcher who had never beaten them and who carried a 5.18 ERA against them into this game. And Miley lived up to his end of the deal, giving back a 3-0 first-inning lead, allowing nine hits and four walks in five innings. But when he left, the game was tied 4-4. And aside from a solo home run by Alex Rodriguez that briefly gave them the lead in the sixth, the Yankees couldn't do anything else against a half-dozen Boston relievers over the final 4⅓ innings. And this despite drawing 11 walks. Somehow, they managed to score just one of those free baserunners, leaving 15 on base to tie their season high. In what is becoming a nightly negative statistic, the Yankees went 3-for-14 with runners in scoring position.

How can you expect them to do much better against one of the truly elite pitching staffs they are likely to meet if they advance even to the division series?

Which brings us to the bullpen, which was once a strength of this team but is now becoming a liability. Wilson retired five of the six batters he faced, but in one of his trademark reflexive righty-right matchup moves, Yankees manager Joe Girardi chose to pull him with two out in the seventh so that the formerly fearsome Dellin Betances could face Mookie Betts. Three pitches later, Betts had his first home run of the night, A-Rod's go-ahead shot was nullified and we were back to square one with a 5-5 tie. Betances has not been the same pitcher for weeks now, and barring some undisclosed injury, all we are to assume is that he is close to being burnt out from overuse. Miller did well in his two innings, allowing a hit and a walk, but Andrew Bailey got hit hard, allowing hits to three of the four batters he faced in the 11th, and Chasen Shreve, virtually untouchable throughout June and July, was tagged for Betts' second home run of the game, the one that put the icing on this spoiled cake.

Afterward, Shreve was near tears in the clubhouse as he struggled to come to grips with how his season has gone so wrong.

"I honestly don't know," Shreve said. "I've never given up home runs like this before. I've never been hit this hard before. I don't feel bad on the mound. I think my stuff's coming out good, I think my split was really good tonight. I've got nothing for you, honestly."

Asked if his recent run of failures had shaken his confidence, Shreve said, "I mean, yeah, it's going to. But I feel like I'm throwing the ball well. It was a down and in pitch. He hit it, I threw a good split before that. I feel like you can ground that ball out all day, you can pop that ball up all day but it's just not happening right now."

Shreve could turn it around over the next few days, but right now it is hard to imagine how.

Which leaves us with Tanaka, who settled down after a horrendous first inning in which he needed 36 pitches to get three outs, but not before the Red Sox scored three runs with two outs, the big blow a long three-run homer by Travis Shaw on a 3-2 splitter, which is Tanaka's money pitch. Girardi ascribed Tanaka's performance to "rust" -- he had not pitched since Sept. 18 due to a hamstring strain suffered running the bases against the Mets at CitiField -- and the lack of effectiveness of his split, a problem Girardi said a normal work week would rectify.

"I'm not too concerned about that because he'll have a normal schedule [this week]," Girardi said. "He'll throw a bullpen and it will all just kind of fall into line. He went a lot of days without throwing a bullpen because we were trying to give his leg as much time as possible. So I'm not too concerned about that."

Really, Girardi has no other choice. Michael Pineda got lit up on Tuesday, Ivan Nova took the treatment on Monday. CC Sabathia has been up and down all year. Luis Severino, who has been extremely effective in his first 10 big-league starts, is a 21-year-old kid and it is hard to imagine the New York Yankees entrusting their season to him in a one-game playoff.

So Tanaka it will be, ready or not. "It was hard coming back from the injury," Tanaka said through his interpreter. "I have not been told if I’m pitching the wild-card game or not, but I think it was a good sign that I was able to come out from this game pretty strong. It may have had something to do with the long layoff but I'm pretty confident it will be better next time out."

Asked if he wanted the challenge of pitching that game, Tanaka said, "Yes. Absolutely."

Considering the likelihood that the Yankees will be able to win at least one, if not two, of their remaining four games, there's a pretty good chance Tanaka will get to pitch that game.

But how far they go after that is very much open to question, and judging off their recent form, very much in doubt.

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