Yankees Complete a Tremendous Season-Opening Trip in Style

It was quite a journey to their 11-inning victory in the series finale at Arizona Wednesday, but despite some weird moments, the Yankees got it done to complete a simply amazing 6-1 season-opening road trip. Be honest, none of us saw a 6-1 start on this trip, right? And down in Box Score Briefs, some thoughts on the Pirates, Red Sox, Angels, and Kris Bryant.

April 3: Yankees 6, Diamondbacks 5 (11)

That must have been some flight from Phoenix to New York Wednesday night for the Yankees after they won their second series of the year by taking the rubber game against the Diamondbacks.

They would never say this, but even they had to have been mildly surprised about winning all four games in Houston and then two of three in Arizona for a dazzling 6-1 start which has them sitting atop the AL East, one game clear of the Red Sox and 1.5 ahead of the consensus favorite Orioles.

Hey, it’s one week and it’s silly for me to even reference the standings. But as I always say, every game matters. Let me repeat: Every. Game. Matters.

So many people fail to understand this concept and it drives me nuts. I’ll be on Twitter/X, railing about something bad the Yankees have done (meaning Giancarlo Stanton is quite often the target) and invariably someone will say “Calm down, it’s April” or “Relax, it’s one game.” As if games in April don’t count, or that a loss in April is somehow counted differently than a loss in September.

Those of you who have been here a while probably get tired of me saying it, but they all count, especially when division titles and wild-card berths are usually decided by a game or two or three.

My expectation for this opening week was something like a 3-4 record against the defending AL West champion Astros and the defending NL champion Diamondbacks, so for the Yankees to have bettered that by three games, in my eyes, is magnificent.

There are certainly some red flags already, though.

Stanton has been horrible as he went 3-for-20 on the trip and struck out 11 times, and until Wednesday when they all had productive games, Aaron Judge, Gleyber Torres, Alex Verdugo and Anthony Rizzo didn’t do much either. That fivesome went a combined 24-for-128 which adds up to a .187 average.

Again, it’s early, but after the offensive nightmare of 2023, it’s something to be wary of because as great as he is, Juan Soto can’t carry this team alone. Soto, in fact, proved human against Arizona because after he went 9-for-17 against Houston, he was 1-for-12 against the Diamondbacks.

In the rotation, length is an issue. The only starter to complete six innings was Marcus Stroman, Nestor Cortes had two terrible first innings in his starts, and Carlos Rodon dealt with all kinds of traffic in his two.

Fortunately, the bullpen has been utterly brilliant and has picked up the slack. Across the seven games, Yankees relievers pitched 28.1 innings and had a 1.27 ERA on the trip, even with Clay Holmes giving us agita every time he went out there.

Here are my observations:

➤ It was another slog for Rodon, though he was better in this game than in his first start in Houston. He got one out into the sixth inning, but he gave up a pair of solo homers to Blaze Alexander in the second and Ketel Marte in the fifth, and he had only one easy inning, a 1-2-3 third. Everything else was tough, but to his credit, he did not buckle. After Marte’s homer tied the game at 2-2, trouble was brewing when Corbin Carroll followed with a double and Lourdes Gurriel walked, but Rodon picked off Carroll trying to steal third to end the threat.

➤ The Yankees had nothing going until the fourth when Torres singled off Merrill Kelly and after Soto forced him, Judge hit his first home run which not only woke him up but it snapped a very 2023-like 18-inning scoreless streak for the team. And then the offensive woes started again. With men on first and second in the fifth, Torres hit into a DP. A Judge walk in the sixth was wasted, and the Yankees went 1-2-3 in the seventh, eighth and ninth.

➤ They got the game to extra innings because their bullpen was nails again. Ian Hamilton replaced Rodon in the sixth and retired all seven men he faced, striking out four. Jonathan Loaisiga pitched a spotless ninth, and then chaos ensued once the game reached extra innings.

➤ Verdugo hit his first Yankee homer, a two-run shot leading off the 10th which he certainly admired for a while, but then Holmes got victimized by soft contact and terrible defense which allowed the Diamondbacks to tie it at 4-4.

➤ Holmes got Joc Pederson to ground out, moving the automatic runner to third, and Anthony Volpe, who had a poor game all around, made a brutal throwing error on a grounder by Geraldo Perdomo which allowed a run to score and also put the tying run on base. A Holmes wild pitch and then a groundout put pinch runner Jake McCarthy at third from where he scored the tying run when Carroll hit a high chopper and easily beat Volpe’s throw. Holmes induced five ground balls in the inning, so this one wasn’t on him, though the wild pitch didn’t help.

➤ But the Yankees, as they did the entire trip, showed some fortitude and shook off that disappointment to score twice again in the 11th. Torres led off with a single and Arizona pitcher Scott McGeough balked home automatic runner Jon Berti from third. Judge then ripped a double into the gap in right-center to score Torres for a 6-4 lead. Yet still there was a long way to go.

➤ Because Holmes hadn’t pitched since Monday, and the Yankees are off Thursday, Boone left him in to start the 11th against righty swingers Christian Walker and Eugenio Suarez. He promptly hit Walker with a pitch to put the tying run on base before striking out out Suarez. Boone then called on lefty Caleb Ferguson who struck out Jace Peterson but got nicked for a bloop RBI single by Jorge Barrosa that made it 6-5. But here, Boone made a smart decision. He intentionally walked Gaby Moreno to load the bases because the next batter was the pitcher, McGeough. Arizona had used its entire bench and due to a double switch it had lost the DH. That meant McGeough had to hit for himself and in his first MLB at bat, Ferguson whiffed him to end the game. Nice break there for the Yankees.

➤ After taking Thursday off, the Yankees play the home opener at 1:05 Friday against the Blue Jays who have stumbled out to a 3-4 start thanks mostly to an offense that averaged only 3.1 runs per game in the first seven games. The Jays were no-hit by Houston Monday and shutout on Wednesday. Stroman will get the start against Yusei Kikuchi who got roughed up by the Rays in his lone start on March 30.

Here are the game highlights:

⚾ When the 2024 schedule came out, I took a look at some of the key inflection points for the Yankees, and the first two things I checked on were where Opening Day would be and who was the opponent, and then the same thing for the final weekend because if the Yankees are in a tight division or wild-card race, that last opponent really matters.

I shuddered at the thought of starting in Houston, but as it turned out, there was nothing to worry about there! And when I saw that they were finishing at home against the Pirates, three games against that perpetually lousy team seemed like it might be pretty advantageous.

However, the Pirates - who have made the postseason just three times since they lost the 1992 NLCS to Atlanta - might be better than we think. Their assignment on opening weekend wasn’t quite as daunting as the Yankees, but still, Pittsburgh sweeping the Marlins in Miami - a team that went to the postseason last year - was pretty impressive.

Then it was on to Washington to play the Nationals who most likely are going to battle it out with the Marlins for last place in the NL East. Pittsburgh won the opener for its first 5-0 start since 1983, then after an off day Tuesday, finally lost 5-3 on Wednesday.

Before we get too wrapped up, I’ll point out that last season the Pirates were the talk of April when they started 20-8, but then injuries piled up, reality prevailed as they lost 11 of their next 12, and by season’s end they were fourth in the NL Central at 76-86.

This season could be different, though. You can make a case that all five teams have a chance to win the NL Central, so barring a horrible stretch of losing or more roster-killing injuries, the Pirates should be able to hang tough. They have built a young, exciting team led by shortstop Oneil Cruz, third baseman Ke’Bryan Hayes, outfielder Jack Suwinski, and pitchers Mitch Keller and Jared Jones. Jones struck out 10 in his MLB debut Saturday, while Keller just signed a five-year, $77 million contract.

So what, you say? The Pirates have never had a year where there payroll exceeded $100 million, so the Keller deal. One of the richest they’ve ever handed out, constitutes quite an outlay. They also paid outfielder Bryan Reynolds last year, the same Reynolds who I was hoping the Yankees would acquire in a trade. And short time Yankee Andrew McCutchen is back in Pittsburgh where his career started and where he was an All-Star to provide leadership at age 37.

Down the road, most likely at some point this season, the No. 1 overall pick in the 2023 draft, righthander Paul Skenes, may be up in the Steel City, too. So, things are looking up for the Pirates and if that last series of the season means anything, it may not be the walkover I thought it could be.

⚾ The Yankees have enough to worry about in the AL East with the Orioles, Blue Jays and Rays, so potentially adding the Red Sox to the mix certainly isn’t a great development. I know the Red Sox played the average Mariners and the horrible A’s, but it’s a little concerning that they won five out of seven on their season-opening West Coast road trip because of the way they pitched.

They gave up only 14 runs in the seven games as Nick Pivetta pitched two excellent games, Tanner Houck threw six scoreless in his start, and ex-Yankee Garrett Whitlock gave up one run in five innings in his start. Weirdly, the two worst games came from their ace Brayan Bello, but Boston won both.

I will say, I thought the Red Sox were going to be better than almost every national media guy thought. Good enough to escape the basement? I wasn’t completely convinced, but their start has me wondering if they can be involved in the AL wild-card race. Now they head down to Anaheim for three to finish it off.

⚾ Speaking of the Angels, their new manager, Ron Washington, may have called the earliest team meeting in baseball history last weekend after his team got blown out for the second game in a row by the Orioles. At that point the Angels had been outscored 24-7 and for a team that has been a perpetual underachiever that has made the postseason just once since losing the 2009 ALCS to the Yankees, Washington felt the need to act quickly.

“I think it was important because I don't want them to get caught up in the fact that we're not playing baseball the way we’re capable of playing baseball,” Washington said. “I don't want them to get inside of themselves. I want them to be free and I want them to know that if we keep coming out here and working that things will take care of itself. That was the point.”

Clearly it has worked. The Angels salvaged the final game against the Orioles and then Thursday they completed a three-game sweep of the Marlins with a 10-2 rout. It might be time for a team meeting in Miami as the Marlins are now 0-7 and have been outscored 51-24. The Marlins sure seem to be proving that their playoff appearance last year was a fluke, because it was. They grabbed the final wild-card spot despite a minus-57 run differential, edging the Cubs by a game despite Chicago having a plus-96 run differential.

⚾ When Kris Bryant began his career with the Cubs, he looked like he’d go on to be a sure-fire Hall of Famer. He came up early in 2015 when the Cubs were just starting to come into their own after their brutal rebuild, and even though he whiffed an NL-high 199 times, he also hit 26 homers and had 99 RBI with an OPS of .858 as he won the NL rookie of the year award.

Then the Cubs ended their 108-year World Series drought in 2016 and Bryant hit 39 homers, scored a league-high 121 runs and had an OPS of .939 which led to him winning the NL MVP. He put up his career-best OPS of .946 in 2017 when the Cubs went back to the NLCS, but then a gradual decline began and by the time he was set to leave in free agency after 2021, plenty of Cubs fans shrugged off the fact that the team dealt him to the Giants at the trade deadline, knowing he probably wasn’t re-signing in Chicago, especially at the price he was commanding.

Bryant will still never have to buy a drink in Chicago thanks to that 2016 season, but the end was just so dissatisfying. He wound up signing with the Rockies in 2022 for $182 million across seven years, and no one could believe that he signed with Colorado, but also, that Colorado would pay him that much money. And now two-plus years down the road, the Bryant signing is giving the Angels’ signing of Anthony Rendon a run for its money as one of the worst in recent years.

Due to injuries, Bryant played in only 142 Rockies games in the first two years of his contract and now his start to 2024 has been abysmal. In his first five games he came to the plate 20 times and did not have a hit. The only time he reached base was via a walk and three hit by pitches. He then struck out in his first two at bats Wednesday in Colorado’s 9-8 loss to the Cubs before he finally broke through with an RBI single in the sixth, a walk in the eighth as the Rockies scored five runs to tie the game, and then a leadoff single in the ninth.

Cubs fans gave him a standing ovation when he batted for the first time in this week’s series at Wrigley on Monday, a nice gesture indeed, but he’s a shell of the player he once was and I’m pretty sure most of those people are fine with the 32-year-old Bryant wearing a different uniform.