Mike Hurley of CBS Boston joined me to talk Yankees-Red Sox and rejected contract extensions.
The Yankees opened the season with a series win over the Red Sox, and it should have been a series sweep.
After the recap, Mike Hurley of CBS Boston joined me to talk Yankees-Red Sox and about contract extensions since like the Yankees with Aaron Judge, the Red Sox have unsuccessfully tried to extend Xander Bogaerts and Rafael Devers.
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My book The Next Yankees Era: My Transition from the Core Four to the Baby Bombers is now available as an ebook!
It feels good to have Yankees baseball back for nearly every day of the next six (and hopefully seven) months. It feels even better that the team got off to a good start and took two out of three against the Red Sox. However, it should feel even better than it does.
It feels good to have Yankees baseball back for nearly every day of the next six (and hopefully seven) months. It feels even better that the team got off to a good start and took two out of three against the Red Sox. However, it should feel even better than it does.
Here are 10 thoughts on the Yankees.
1. Overall, it was a good weekend for the Yankees. But it could have and should have been better. (Kind of like their offseason.) The Yankees could have crushed the Red Sox with a win on Sunday night, sending the Red Sox to an 0-3 start and needing to only go 7-6 to win the season series, which is more important than ever since tiebreaker games no longer exist and the difference between going to the postseason or not could easily come down to head-to-head record. (Last season, it was the difference between the Yankees playing the one-game playoff at home or on the road.) Instead, the Yankees gave away Sunday night’s game. They had 16 baserunners in the game and left 13 on. Sure, they were unlucky at times with expected batting averages of .630, .990, .450 and .560 on balls that were outs, but they also left the bases loaded in the first and third, couldn’t score with second and third and one out in the fifth, hit into two inning-ending double plays and got the leadoff man on in five innings and only scored him once.
Yes, I went into the weekend wanting a series win, since that’s all anyone can ever want as a baseball fan. But the Yankees left a win on the table and a sweep on the table, and it’s something they did far too often last season.
2. For as frustrating as Sunday night was, the weekend as a whole was a positive, considering the Yankees recorded 87 outs and their starters only produced 31 of those outs (36 percent). Over an entire season, that’s a recipe for disaster, but in early April and coming off a shortened spring training, it’s acceptable.
I went into Opening Day with the same kind of bad feeling I went into the wild-card game with because it was Gerrit Cole against Nathan Eovaldi and because Cole can’t seem to pitch well against the Red Sox (or the Blue Jays or Rays for that matter) and because Eovaldi has dominated the Yankees ever since leaving New York as a complete bust. Two batters and six pitches into the game, the Red Sox led 2-0 and my bad feeling had come to fruition. After 10 pitches, Cole still didn’t have an out, and the Yankees were conducting their first mound visit of the season after three batters. After four batters, the Red Sox had a 3-0 lead in what ended up being a 27-pitch first for the Yankees’ “ace.”
3. After the game, Cole didn’t use the “sick my stomach” line he used after getting lit up and thoroughly embarrassed in the last game the 2021 Yankees played, but I was sick to mine. Cole had been awful again against the Red Sox (4 IP, 4 H, 3 R, 3 ER, 1 BB, 3 K, 1 HR), and this wasn’t a ‘Hey, it’s the first game of the season and the first of 33 starts for him’ performance, this was the latest example in a trend of his inability to beat the Yankees’ direct competition for the AL East.
Cole might not have been pitching with a hamstring injury like he was in October, but he did have to deal with the extenuating circumstance of having his start delayed by four minutes because of the Opening Day ceremonies.
“The festivities got a little away from schedule,” Cole said as an excuse for his first-inning meltdown.
It’s not quite the cringe-worthy, humiliating kind-of line Brian Cashman gave us all a few weeks ago when he essentially said the Yankees won the 2017 World Series, but it’s embarrassing for someone of Cole’s stature to act like a four-minute delay was the reason he walked Kike Hernandez on four pitches and then gave up three straight hard-hit balls with exit velocities of 101.4, 111.8 and 91.9 mph.
4. Thankfully, Cole’s disturbing first inning didn’t sink the Yankees’ day. Anthony Rizzo launched an important two-run home run in the bottom of the first to get the Yankees on the board in their eventual comeback, walk-off win. The next day he hit another two-run home run in another Yankees’ comeback win, and on Sunday night, it was his two-run single that tied the game in the fourth. Rizzo finished the series 3-for-10 with two home runs, 6 RBIs and three walks. He was easily the Yankees’ best position player over the weekend.
When the Yankees re-signed Rizzo, I wrote Anthony Rizzo Is Not Freddie Freeman. And it’s true, he’s not. I wanted Freeman because he’s the better player and because Rizzo was coming off the worst season of his career since his rookie season nine years ago, and players in their 30s don’t usually turn their performance trajectory around once it starts to head south. (At least not since the ’90s and early 2000s when there was a way to do so.
5. Giancarlo Stanton was the other position player star of the weekend, homering on both Friday and Saturday and becoming the first Yankee to homer in six straight games against the Red Sox. He has been a different player since the start of last season, and that’s because he has been a healthy player since the start of last season. In 2018, he played the majority of the season through a hamstring injury, in 2019, he barely played, and in 2020, it was more of the same from 2019. But since last year, the Stanton I thought the Yankees were trading for back before 2018 has been available and locked in. (Except for that swing on a pitch from Hansel Robles on Opening Day that bounced before the plate.)
6. For as good as Rizzo and Stanton were in the first three games of the season, the Yankees’ bullpen was the collective MVP of the series. Here’s their line: 18.2 IP, 6 H, 3 R, 2 ER, 9 BB, 19 K, 1 HR, 0.96 ERA, 0.803 WHIP. That’s simply ridiculous. That kind of line against the Red Sox’ offense shouldn’t be possible. It’s possible because this is the best Yankees’ bullpen ever.
I’m not just saying that because they pitched six hitless innings on Saturday and allowed one hit in 5 2/3 innings on Sunday. I say it because every option out of the pen is trustworthy. The Yankees don’t have to exhaust Chad Green and Jonathan Loaisiga because they have Clay Holmes and Miguel Castro and Lucas Luetge. They don’t have to always turn to those four because they have Michael King and Wandy Peralta. They have their top pitching prospecting in Clarke Schmidt out there (who was impressive on Sunday), I think everyone liked what they saw out of Ron Marinaccio’s horizontal break on his slider and we’re still waiting for JP Sears to make his debut. There’s no Nick Nelson or Brooks Kriske. Albert Abreu is gone. Brody Koerner and Justin Wilson aren’t coming into games. The Yankees’ bullpen is the deepest its ever been with reliable arms.
7. Rizzo and Stanton were great, the bullpen was outstanding and even Aaron Boone did his job well. Yes, that’s a real sentence I just wrote. Opening Day was the best managerial job he has ever done in a single game between his lineup decisions (playing DJ LeMahieu over Gleyber Torres and batting LeMahieu fifth), the order of his bullpen choices and his call to pinch hit Torres for Kyle Higashioka in the 10th. Don’t get me wrong, all of these decisions were simple and logical, but nothing comes easy to Boone, so when he does so many things right in a single day, it’s remarkable and worth praising. Boone had many chances to screw up Friday’s game and he never did.
On Saturday, he had another good game. Yes, two consecutive games of competent managing from a major-league manager. It’s been a long time since Yankees fans have experienced that. But on Sunday, Boone showed he hasn’t completely evolved into making the logical decision every time.
On Sunday, Boone sat LeMahieu. He sat his Gold Glove-winning second baseman, who hit a game-tying, eighth-inning home run on Friday, so that he could play both Torre and Aaron Hicks. A flat-out irresponsible choice for the third game of the season against a division opponent.
Prior to Opening Day, Boone spoke at length about how hard the decision was to play LeMahieu over Torres, as if he were choosing between two equal players and not the Yankees’ 2019-2020 MVP and a player who has ruined what was once a promising career. He said Torres “understood” the decision, which I’m glad an incapable defender with a .703 OPS over his last 676 plate appearances can “understand” why he’s not in the lineup. But two days later, Torres was in over LeMahieu.
8. This is going to be a constant problem this season. The Yankees’ obsession with load management and unnecessary rest (a strategy that has produced zero World Series appearances in 12-going-on-13 years) coupled with them having too many players for not enough lineup spots is going to be a daily theme. It’s not that they have too many “good” players for not enough lineup spots, they just have too many players they feel are worthy of everyday at-bats. No one more than Hicks.
The Hicks’ contract extension was a foolish mistake the day it was offered, and has grown into a regrettable decision, as Hicks entered 2021 having played in 62 percent of the Yankees’ games since the start of 2019. It’s not the money that’s the problem in ways that seven-year deals for players into their late-30s is normally a problem, since it was $70 million over seven years (and because I don’t care about the money since it’s not my money), but it is the money that’s the problem because it’s not enough money. It’s not enough money in that the Yankees don’t have to justify playing Hicks every day for a return on their investment, so Hicks can just linger on the roster for THREE MORE YEARS AFTER THIS SEASON and cause lineup chaos.
The crowded lineup is an issue because the Yankees have made it an issue. Rather than commit to playing Stanton in the outfield regularly and making Hicks the fourth outfielder, they go out of their way to clog up the DH spot with Stanton, forcing Hicks into the outfield and then forcing an infielder to the bench, and it seems like the Yankees are now going to rest an infielder everyday because of this. Hicks as a two-days-a-week player is fine with me. Hicks every day and forcing a better bat to the bench is not fine.
9. You can bet the house a regular (probably Josh Donaldson) will be on the bench in Monday’s series opener against Blue Jays and at some point in the series you will likely see Stanton (who mostly only bats) or Aaron Judge on the bench because it’s too many baseball games in a row for the Yankees’ best two hitters.
Judge needs to play. He needs to play because he’s the Yankees’ best player and the lineup’s most important hitter. And now he needs to play because he has to accumulate enough stats to try to top the $30.5 average annual salary he turned down prior to Opening Day.
I don’t know if Judge thinks he’s younger than he is, thinks he’s less injury prone than he is or think he’s the best player in baseball, but the offer the Yankees extended to him was more than fair. When reports came out he rejected an extension, I assumed he turned down like six years and $150 million. But seven years at $30.5 million per season? It’s likely he regrets that. For him to say he’s “disappointed” is off-putting. He’s disappointed he’s inaccurately valuing his own worth and turned down nearly a quarter of a billion dollars?
When Bryce Harper hit free agency, he was 26 years old, a .279/.388/.512 hitter who had won Rookie of the Year, and MVP, a Silver Slugger and was a six-time All-Star. He had only missed 17 percent of the games in his career to that point. He received 13 years and $330 million.
When Mookie Betts got traded by the Red Sox and extended by the Dodgers, he was 27 years old, a .301/.374/.519 hitter who had won an MVP, four Gold Gloves, three Silver Sluggers and was a four-time All-Star. He had only missed eight percent of the games in his career to that point. he received 12 year and $365 million.
Judge is going to be 30 in two weeks. When his new contract begins, he will a few weeks shy of 31. He entered this season as a .276/.386/.554 hitter who won Rookie of the Year and two Silver Sluggers and was a three-time All-Star. He has missed 24 percent of the games in his career from his major-league debut through the end of 2021.
If it’s true that Judge is seeking a nine- or 10-year-deal worth more annually than Mike Trout then good luck to him. Judge spent a good amount of his 20s on the injured list and we are expected to believe he will be healthier with age. Is he a fine wine? No, he’s the biggest everyday player in major-league history for which there’s no comparison as to how he will age, and he wants more annual money than arguably the best player in the history of the sport. I like 30-year-old Judge hitting second (or third like he did on Sunday) in the Yankees’s lineup. I will probably like 31-year-old Judge through 34-year-old Judge doing the same. But 39-year-old Judge and 40-year-old Judge making somewhere around $37 million per year and likely playing sparingly? No thanks.
10. I’m happy with the weekend, but I could be happier. I’m more content than anything since it was another missed opportunity from a franchise that has missed every opportunity in the front office and on the field in recent seasons.
There’s no off day on Monday, and there’s no break in the opponent either as the Yankees host the Blue Jays for the next four days. The Blue Jays entered the weekend as the odds-on favorite to win the American League, mostly because of their deep and vaunted lineup, and then they went out and scored 20 runs over the weekend. The good news is they gave up 23 runs. I don’t think the gap between the Blue Jays and Yankees is large, and there might not be a gap at all. We’ll start to find out on Monday night.
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Here are the bets for Sunday, April 10.
The first loss of the season came on Saturday (thanks, Tigers!) and the first losing day of the season was Saturday (also thanks, Brewers and Dodgers!). Thankfully, we can turn the page like Aaron Boone reminded everyone every single day last season, and Sunday is a new day with a new slate of games.
Here are the bets for Sunday, April 10.
White Sox -125 over Tigers
It’s not often you get a matchup as favorable as the White Sox have on Sunday against Tigers’ lefty Tarik Skubal.
Tim Anderson (11): .500/.546/1.200
Luis Robert (1): .000/.000/.000
Jose Abreu (11): .455/.455/.546
Eloy Jimenez (2): .000/.000/.000
Andrew Vaughn (8): .286/.375/.286
Josh Harrison (3): .333/.333/.667
Adam Engel (3): .667/.667/1.667
Reese McGuire (0)
Danny Mendick (7): .500/.571/.500
Sure, it’s not the greatest of sample sizes. It’s pretty much the smallest of sample sizes. But it’s something, and the White Sox are going to roll out eight right-handed hitters against Skubal, and righties have an .824 OPS against him in his career (lefties have a .620).
The Tigers handed me my first loss of the season on Saturday and now it’s time to get it back.
Braves -170 over Reds
Hunter Greene makes his major-league debut on Sunday. He was outstanding in seven Double-A starts in 2021 and solid in 14 at Triple-A. But the former second-overall pick won’t be facing Double- or Triple-A lineups in his debut, he’ll be facing the World Series champions.
I love Ian Anderson. Since his 2020 debut when he nearly no-hit the Yankees, I have been a fan. In his first start of the season he gets the exceedingly weak Reds lineup at home. It’s a perfect way for a starter to begin a year.
This line was at -235 on Saturday and now it’s down to -165 on Sunday morning. I thought maybe the entire Braves roster went on the injured list and they were playing an all-minor-league roster. But no. Just a crazy money line swing in favor of the lowly Reds.
Brewers -130 over Cubs
I’m going back to the Brewers well. Even though I wrote on Saturday that I’m not as high on the Brewers as nearly every other baseball fan and observer, and every projection, I can’t fathom them getting swept by this Cubs teams to begin the season. Saturday’s game was a debacle with the Brewers getting shut out 9-0, a day after blowing a two-run lead.
Marcus Stroman is really good and is probably the reason the line has dropped from the -130 I took it at down to -120. Then more money realized the Cubs really suck and their 2-0 record is a mirage, and the line has been bet back to -130. Freddy Peralta is also really good (and to me the Brewers’ true No. 2 and at times even a 1A to Corbin Burnes), though this game is more about the overrated Brewers offense being due to break out. Coming off a shutout loss, no better time than today.
More to come for the late afternoon games!
Braves -170 over Reds
Dodgers -190 over Rockies
Those are the lines for this parlay today. When I took this parlay yesterday, both money lines were over -200, which I why I put the two together. Now that the Braves fell to -170, I took them straight up as well. (Again, not sure what’s going on there. Yes, Greene could be lights out in his major-league debut, but even so, I don’t know how the Reds are scoring.)
I may just have to take the Dodgers straight up as well depending on how the early Braves game plays out.
Yesterday: 2-3 (-1.95u)
Season: 7-3 (+3.31u)
Here are the bets for Saturday, April 9.
Yesterday was a good day. No, a great day. The Yankees beat the Red Sox, Aaron Boone showed some semblance of intelligence, and the bets went 4-0.
Here are the bets for Saturday, April 9.
Tigers +115 over White Sox
The Tigers’ starting lineup on Saturday has crushed Dylan Cease with an .876 OPS in 75 plate appearances. The White Sox’ starting lineup has only hit for a .717 OPS against Casey Mize. When I originally saw this line, the Tigers were at +130. By the time I bet it, it had dropped to +115.
The Tigers stole the first game of the series when A.J. Pollock couldn’t cleanly catch a Javier Baez ball off the wall to give the Tigers’ a walk-off win after replay review. Kendall Graveman, Aaron Bummer and Liam Hendriks combined to throw 76 pitches, and I’m not sure if any will be available back-to-back games to begin the season when it will be 40 degrees with a feels like of 33 at first pitch in Detroit on Saturday.
Brewers -150 over Cubs
This game and this matchup was supposed to take place yesterday. I’m still on it with some added value as it was -160 when I took it yesterday.
I’m not as high on the Brewers as most, especially projections, because their lineup leaves a lot to be desired. Yes, they have a very strong rotation and a solid bullpen, but the only hitter to fear is Christian Yelich, and it’s going on three years since he has last been feared. Unless you fear ex-Yankee legend Jace Peterson who started at third base for the Brewers in their season-opening loss to the Cubs.
That season-opening loss to the Cubs is why I’m on the Brewers in Game 2 of the series. The Cubs are awful. They used their one good starter in Game 1, and used a Nico Hoerner two-run home run to help lead them to an unexpected win in a game started by Corbin Burnes. (Of course, Clint Frazier went 1-for-1 with a double in his Cubs debut. I will miss Frazier.) Back-to-back wins for the Cubs over the Brewers? I don’t see it. Especially since no one outside of Andrelton Simmons (5-for-7) hits Brandon Woodruff. I don’t expect Justin Steele to give the Cubs length on Friday (five innings would be his ceiling in an ideal scenario), so the Cubs will need at least four innings from their bullpen, and the Brewers will have many opportunities to win this one.
Yankees -155 over Red Sox
The first batters in the Yankees’ lineup on Saturday are a combined 12-for-41 (.292) with five home runs against Nick Pivetta. The current Red Sox roster is miserable against Luis Severino. J.D. Martinez has a .921 OPS in 19 plate appearances, but that’s it. Jackie Bradley .533 (30 plate appearances), Xander Bogaerts .200 (25), Rafael Devers .143 (14).
I never feel confident picking these Yankees against these Red Sox, but the numbers suggest I’m foolish to feel this way. It’s Severino’s first start since Game 3 of the 2019 ALCS, and he will likely be held to even less of a pitch count than Gerrit Cole was on Friday at 75-80. Even so, I think a Yankees offense that struggled on Opening Day and got all of their runs via the home run and the automatic runner will bust out on Saturday. With Aaron Hicks sitting, Giancarlo Stanton in the outfield and Aaron Boone suddenly turning into a reliable manager in a one-game and two-day sample size, it’s lining up for a 2-0 start to the season for the Yankees.
Dodgers -145 over Rockies
The Dodgers’ lineup doesn’t have very good numbers against German Marquez, but the Rockies’ lineup has abysmal numbers against Tony Gonsolin in a limited 30 plate appearances. But it’s the Dodgers against the Rockies, and there’s no reason the Dodgers shouldn’t be at least -200 every time they play the Rockies. It doesn’t matter that it’s Marquez and it doesn’t matter that it’s on the road. The Rockies suck.
Dodgers-Rockies Under 12 -115
The Dodgers-Rockies under 11.5 was cruising on Friday with two runs scored heading into the fourth. Then the Dodgers scored five times, forcing the Rockies to go to their bullpen and I figured the wager was lost cause. Needing 33 outs at Coors Field and only being able to give up four runs? Not a spot you want to be in. Thankfully, both teams put up zeros all the way until the bottom of the ninth when the Rockies scored a run.
I’m going back to the well on Saturday with the over/under increased by half a run. The Dodgers have a lesser pitcher going on Saturday in Gonsolin than on Friday in Walker Buehler, but the Rockies have a better pitcher going on Saturday in Marquez than on Friday in Kyle Freeland.
Yesterday: 4-0
The result was there in that the Yankees beat the Red Sox, even if the way the Yankees went about getting the result was excruciating and painful.
Opening Day always puts me in a good mood, and after the way the 2021 season played out, followed by six months of no Yankees baseball, sandwiched around a three-month lockout that delayed the start of the season by a week, I woke up at 5:30 a.m. on Friday wondering how I would get through the next seven-and-a-half hours. Twenty minutes after waking up, I was reminded how I would get through the next seven-and-a-half hours when the 18-month-old down the hall woke up and let me know he was energized and ready for the day since he hadn’t stayed up watching late-night baseball like yours truly. With my pregnant wife (who’s due in less than a week) sleeping, I would be starting this Opening Day with Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.
Even though the offseason had been a huge disappointment with the Yankees purposely choosing to gamble on their entire 2022 season, not even the penny-pinching Hal Steinbrenner or the still-whining-about-2017 Brian Cashman could damper my mood. As I sat through my 243rd career viewing of Mickey and Professor Von Drake trying to restore all the colors of the Clubhouse, I started to think about the Opening Day lineup.
Josh Donaldson has to lead off. Anthony Rizzo will bat third because Aaron Boone feels he has to break up Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. There’s no way DJ LeMahieu won’t be in the lineup. Gleyber Torres can’t play over LeMahieu.
Before I could think about how the bottom of the order would be constructed, I was being handed The Very Hungry Caterpillar to read.
As the morning went on, Judge’s contract extension became the focal point of the day, overshadowing the start of a new season. Judge had set a soft (and fake) deadline of first pitch of the season to agree to an extension with the Yankees (since if the Yankees offer him $300 million midseason, I’m pretty sure he’s not going to tell them the deadline had passed), and he had turned down the Yankees very fair offer of a seven-year extension from 2023 through 2029 at $30.5 million per season. For someone who will become a free agent for the first time at the advanced age in the baseball world of 30, and for someone who has missed 24 percent of the Yankees’ game since his major-league debut for various injuries, Judge comes off as rather foolish to reject the deal. I’m not sure if he’s in tune with how the free-agent market has played out in recent years, but a couple of weeks ago, Carlos Correa, whose three years younger than Judge and plays the more premium position, had to settle for a contract.
Cashman openly told the media and public the terms of the deal, so that the media and public would turn on Judge for not accepting the deal rather than turning on Cashman and ownership for not getting a deal done. Three-plus years ago the Yankees didn’t even meet with then-26-year-old free-agent Bryce Harper because they had Giancarlo Stanton locked up for a billion years, had Aaron Hicks who they were close to extending for seven years, had Clint Frazier waiting for his chance to be given a full-time or regular chance in the majors and would have to pay Judge, of course. Since then, the Yankees have done everything they can to not let Stanton play the outfield, Hicks has missed 68 percent percent of games following his extension, Frazier was released for nothing this offseason and now Judge still hasn’t been paid or extended. Nearly everything the Yankees have told their fans over the last four offseasons has been a lie. But again, Steinbrenner and Cashman couldn’t ruin my Opening Day.
The only people who could ruin my Opening Day would be Gerrit Cole, or the Yankees’ offense or Boone, or some combination of the three.
Cole tried his hardest to ruin the day, just like he had ruined the last game the Yankees played, against the same Red Sox in the one-game playoff in October, and just like he had ruined September by pitching like Nick Nelson, which had forced the Yankees to play that one-game playoff on the road.
Cole walked Kike Hernandez to begin the game and none of the four pitches were even close to the zone, as he looked like 2011 Dellin Betances trying to throw strikes. Cole needed to find the zone, so he grooved a first-pitch fastball to Rafael Devers, who took it for a strike. Cole went back to his fastball, and Devers planted it in the right-field seats. Two batters and six pitches in, and the Yankees trailed 2-0.
Four pitches later, Xander Bogaerts had himself an off-the-left-field-wall single, and 10 pitches into the season, the Yankees were conducting a mound visit. I couldn’t believe what I was watching, but at the same time, I could very well believe what I was watching as Cole has always struggled against the Red Sox, even during his time with the Astros, and he has also had trouble as a Yankee pitching well against the Blue Jays and Rays, all of which is a very big problem. It felt like I was reliving the wild-card game, but worse since Cole at least got two outs in that game before it unraveled and ended the Yankees’ season. So far he had faced three batters and hadn’t recorded an out.
After four batters, Cole still didn’t have an out. J.D. Martinez doubled down the right-filed line, and the Red Sox’ lead increased to 3-0. I wanted to laugh in order to not cry, but all I could do was sit in stunning disbelief. All I could think was thankfully my wife being due at any moment had prevented me from wasting my time, money and day at Yankee Stadium for this game.
Cole eventually got out of the first, needing 27 pitches to do so. For someone on a 15-20 pitch pitch count, he had just used 34-36 percent of his daily allotment of pitches to get three outs. Entering the game, the Yankees were likely going to need 12-15 outs from their bullpen, and now they were likely going to need to get something like 15-18 outs from their bullpen, which would impact their entire weekend. The game was on the brink of becoming a disaster, not just for Friday, but for Saturday and Sunday, and leading into the Blue Jays series as well.
With my most despised player in all of baseball in Nathan Eovaldi on the mound, Josh Donaldson swung at the first pitch of his Yankees career and grounded out to second. Judge swung at the first pitch of his post-turned-down-a-$30.5 million-per-year extension and blooped a single to right. Anthony Rizzo took the first pitch of his at-bat and then sent the next one into the right-field seats. The Yankees now trailed 3-2.
Cole settled in to put up zeros in the second, third and fourth, and Giancarlo Stanton hit a Yankee Stadium special for a solo home run to tie the game in the fourth. Cole’s day was over and the game was tied 3-3. Eovaldi didn’t have much left either, and so it would become a bullpen game for the last five innings, where the Yankees would have a decisive advantage, being able to rely on the strongest facet of their team with the Red Sox needing to rely on the weakest facet of theirs. The only thing that could screw it up would be the one who would decide which Yankees relievers would be used: Boone.
First Boone went to Chad Green, who pitched a scoreless fifth. Then he went to Clay Holmes, who did his job getting three ground balls (his specialty) with expected batting averages of .170, .250 and .120. The .170 went for a double inside the third-base line. The .250 moved the runner over to third. The .120 resulted in an RBI single with the infield pulled in. Holmes had done exactly what he was expected to do and the Yankees were once again losing, 4-3.
I can’t hear Garrett Whitlock’s name without thinking of the Yankees not protecting him in the Rule 5 draft to retain Nick Nelson and Brooks Kriske. And here he was, following former Yankee bust Eovaldi with scoreless inning after scoreless inning against the Yankees. The Yankees’ lineup was going down with ease over and over, and I was just waiting for the Red Sox eventually add an insurance run or two and put the game out of reach.
There has been an unnecessary amount of talk of late about whether LeMahieu or Torres should play second base regularly, and it’s been hard to hear and stomach. It’s inexplicable that Torres could play over LeMahieu. This isn’t the beginning of 2019 when Torres was coming off an unbelievable rookie season and LeMahieu was signed as a super utility player and wasn’t in the 2019 Opening Day lineup. This is the beginning of 2022, and Torres has been barely a playable option since the start of the shortened 2020 season, while LeMahieu bad been the team’s MVP in 2019 and 2020 before playing through a hernia injury in 2021.
Thankfully, Boone made the sensical decision to play the two-time Gold Glove-winning LeMahieu at second base on Opening Day. As one of the only Yankees to have success against Eovaldi, the Yankees needed both LeMahieu’s bat and glove in the lineup, not Torres and the prayer that he might ever again become the player he was in 2018-19. With one out in the eighth, LeMahieu hit a game-tying home run off Whitlock. 4-4.
The game remained 4-4, and in the bottom of the ninth, Judge doubled with two outs, and the Red Sox chose to intentionally walk Rizzo to bring up Stanton against Hansel Robles. Stanton struck out on three pitches in one of the least competitive at-bats you’ll ever see, which included him swinging at the first pitch that bounced several feet before reaching the plate.
The gimmicky automatic runner on second in extra innings rule had found its way into Opening Day for the Yankees for the second straight season, and the Red Sox plated that automatic runner to take a 5-4 lead. In the bottom of the 10th, Boone would call on Torres to make his season debut as a pinch hitter for Kyle Higashioka, who had the kind of forgettable day at the plate that he will have most times as a now everyday catcher in the majors. Torres was able to lift a fly ball to center to tie the game at 5. (After the game on YES, John Flaherty said he was confused why Boone pinch hit Torres for Higashioka. Apparently, Flaherty has never watched Higashioka play baseball.)
In the 11th, Michael King worked a perfect inning, looking as sharp as he always has out of the bullpen. (He should never be allowed to open or start a game. Just use him out of the bullpen.) And in the bottom of the 11th, Donaldson led off with a single up the middle to score the automatic runner and win the game for the Yankees.
Cole tried to ruin the game, and nearly did. The Yankees’ offense tried to ruin the game, and nearly did. The only one of my fears who never came close to ruining the game was Boone.
From batting Donaldson first, to playing LeMahieu over Torres and batting LeMahieu fifth, to pulling Cole after the fourth and going to Green then Holmes then Miguel Castro then Jonathan Loaisiga then Wandy Peralta then Aroldis Chapman then King, to pinch hitting Torres for Higashioka and to not bunting in extra innings, it was a masterpiece for Boone. It was easily the best managed game of his time as Yankees manager. Don’t get me wrong, all of these decisions were simple and logical, but nothing comes easy to Boone, so when he does so many things right in a single day, it’s remarkable and worth praising. Boone had many chances to screw up Friday’s game and he never did.
Four batters into the game, I had been dreaming about the lockout and how glorious those three months were without the Yankees to get worked up and angry about and to lose sleep over. By the end of the game, I was celebrating a walk-off win over the Red Sox with my 18-month-old son. (OK, I was celebrating and brought him into the celebration.) He didn’t know dad had just staved off a -170 money line loss, the Yankees had avoided yet another embarrassing defeat at the hands of the Red Sox, Cole once again couldn’t pitch well in a big game against not just a division rival but the rival, LeMahieu looked like his old self and Boone had finally displayed some semblance of being able to manager a Major League Baseball team.
The result was there in that the Yankees beat the Red Sox, even if the way the Yankees went about getting the result was excruciating and painful. It was a big win since every win is big, as proven by last year’s standings tie, which forced the Yankees to play the one-game playoff on the road, and it was mostly made possible by the decisions of Boone. What a way to start the season.
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