The Yankees placed Masahiro Tanaka on the disabled list, and he is off to see possibly a group of the best orthopedic doctors:

As King notes, Tanaka is coming off his worst start of this, his first season in the U.S. major leagues. Additionally, Heyman reports that Tanaka did indeed mention some discomfort to the team after Tuesday night’s rough outing against the Indians.

This season, Tanaka, 25, has pitched to a 2.51 ERA and 7.11 K/BB ratio in 18 starts and 129 1/3 innings. He was recently named to the AL All-Star team and is generally regarded as a strong Cy Young contender at the mid-point.

With CC Sabathia out for the season and Michael Pineda progressing slowly, the Yankees keep losing depth to their rotation.. Four fifths of the opening rotation is on the disabled list, two of them unlikely to return this season. They received a ton of innings out of a very good bullpen, but Tanaka was giving them a rest every so often. There will be more pressure on that group now.

Tanaka’s injury is another data point in poor performance linked to injury spectrum. Maybe this goes back to the Napoli home run. It could be he wanted to throw the fastball there because he felt he couldn’t throw another pitch that put pressure on the elbow.