Healthy Tanaka regaining his groove

OAKLAND — Masahiro Tanaka has pitched in hard luck for most of this season, but on one matter there seems to be certainty. For the first time since 2014, when he opened his first season with a 12-1 record in his first 14 starts, the Japanese right-hander appears to be completely healthy.

Tanaka threw seven innings of one-run, five-hit ball in Saturday’s 5-1 win over the A’s at the Oakland Coliseum, effortlessly tossing 92 pitches.

The hard luck: He’s 2-0 with a 3.24 ERA, and largely because of shallow run support, in seven of his nine starts he’s failed to earn a decision.

The good news: “He feels good and I don’t think he worries about his arm now,” pitching coach Larry Rothschild said after the Yankees won their fourth in a row and climbed out of the cellar in the AL East for the first time since April 23. “For the better part of last year he’d have to monitor it just to be safe.

“When your body tells you feel good, your spirits pick up and you can do what you’re used to doing more. He feels good and hopefully it will continue that way.”

Tanaka was diagnosed in 2014 with a partially torn ligament in his right elbow, missing most of the last three months of that season. He was on the disabled list last year for the entire month of May with a flexor tendon issue in his right forearm and after the season had a bone spur removed from that elbow.

During Spring Training, general manager Brian Cashman said the club had known about the bone spur before the Yankees signed him to a seven-year, $155 million contract and paid a $20 million posting fee to the Rakuten Golden Eagles, Tanaka’s Japanese League club.

Cashman also said that all of Tanaka’s arm issues stemmed from that …

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