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Game 133, Yankees at Mariners – Kikuchi vs. Tanaka

Yusei Kikuchi vs. Masahiro Tanaka, 7:10pm

After a fairly hard-fought loss last night, the M’s face off against the Yankees in a game pitting two of the bigger NPB stars against each other. Sure, sure: Shohei Ohtani’s the bigger name, but it at the time he was posted, Tanaka had Daisuke Matsuzaka-like hype. He’s settled in as an above-average #3, but he was pretty dominant in his first year, but just hasn’t been *quite* the same since an elbow injury scare in 2014. Part of that is velocity related, but not a ton: he was 93+, and now he’s more 91-92, but a larger part is his once super-human splitter becoming more and more mortal.