1. Opening Day feels like a postseason game. The hype, the anticipation, a sold-out crowd, the stadium bunting and two No. 1 starters going all create that feeling. And after Trent Grisham and Aaron Judge struck out to open the game and Max Fried struggled to throw strikes in the first inning, it certainly felt like a Yankees postseason game. Thankfully, that feeling didn’t last long.

The game changed in the bottom of the first after Fried allowed a four-pitch, leadoff walk to Luis Arraez (who would rather do anything than walk) and soon faced a first-and-third, one-out jam after Grisham misread a shallow fly ball. Fried bounced back to strike out the right-handed Willy Adames and got Jung Hoo Lee to ground out to end the inning and that was the game.

2. That was the game because for at least one night the ‘Run It Back’ offense lit up Logan Webb, the 2025 National League innings and strikeout leader. In the second inning, Giancarlo Stanton lined a one-out single and Jazz Chisholm got drilled by a pitch and then Jose Caballero drove in the season’s first run with a single to left. The speedy Caballero took second on the throw into the infield and then came around to score when Ryan McMahon followed with a two-run single up the middle to make it 3-0.

“I think guys were just going up there doing what the game asked them to do and take their knocks,” McMahon said. “We put a bunch of balls in play, found a couple of holes and ended up a good number.”

3. Austin Wells then also singled before Grisham drove in two more with a triple to right-center. The Yankees had a 5-0 lead and that would be more than enough for Fried. After being unable to complete five innings in his first start and Yankees debut last March despite being staked to a 14-4 lead, Fried made this lead stand up.

4. Fried didn’t have his best stuff and for most of the first inning he didn’t have any stuff and still somehow pitched pitch 6 1/3 innings of three-hit scoreless baseball.

“That’s what an ace looks like when he’s grinding,” Boone said. “He set the tone for us.”

5. Fried looked like the pitcher who led the league in wins last year and the pitcher the Yankees went 22-10 with on the mound. The pitcher who didn’t lose a start until May 30 last season.

“It wasn’t the sharpest, but at the end of the day, we won the game,” Fried said. “I got deep into the game. You take it and you move on.”

“You take it and you move on” makes Fried sound like he lost the game. Yes, I will gladly “take” 6 1/3 scoreless innings and “move on.”

6. Webb struggled against the Yankees on Opening Day in 2023 at Yankee Stadium and again last April at the Stadium and then again in this one. For as filthy as Webb looked in the first inning, it was shocking to see the Yankees have such resounding success against him in the second inning, especially so quickly. Those five runs came in a flash as the Yankees’ game plan was clearly to attack Webb early in the count and worked as well as it possibly could against a pitcher of Webb’s caliber.

7. The Yankees tacked on two more runs against Webb in the fifth when they opened the inning with three straight singles and then capitalized on an Adames throwing error to make it 7-0. The Yankees managed to score seven runs in a game against one of the very best pitchers in the game with only one extra-base hit (the Grisham triple) and with Aaron Judge providing nothing as the reigning MVP went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts and a groundout. It’s good to know the Yankees can win when Judge does absolutely nothing.

“On a night when we didn’t hit the ball out of the ballpark, we had a lot of good, pressurized at-bats,” Boone said. “We can beat you in a lot of different ways.”

8. The offense and Fried completely removed Boone from the game. By the time Boone had make in-game decisions, the Yankees had a seven-run lead and were eight outs away from a win. The old adage is “good pitching beats good hitting” and the adage around here is “getting good pitching and good hitting will always beat Boone.” I will take as many of these smooth, easy wins as possible.

“You want to get that first win, first hits,” Boone said. “You want to get into that normal rhythm of the season, which takes a little bit of time. Obviously, it was a great way to start things.”

9. There’s nothing worse than the day off after Opening Day. You wait so long for baseball to return (especially after this winter weather) and then it does and it’s immediately gone again. But there’s nothing worse than losing on Opening Day and then having to sit around and mull that loss for a couple of days. When the Yankees win on Opening Day it makes the one-day break that much easier to take and the Yankees have done a lot of winning on Opening Day in recent years (8-1 in the Boone era).

“You want to get that first win, first hits,” Boone said. “You want to get into that normal rhythm of the season, which takes a little bit of time. Obviously, it was a great way to start things.”

10. It will be Cam Schlittler against Robbie Ray when the two teams resume their seasons on Friday afternoon. The Giants have never seen Schlittler, so advantage Yankees there, though the regular Yankees outside of Judge have abysmal numbers against Ray, so advantage Giants there. Expect Boone to utilize his three right-handed bench bats in the second game of the season, but before then, take the next day to enjoy the result of the first game of the season.

Yankees baseball is back. Real, meaningful baseball. For the first time since lying down to a fatigued Blue Jays bullpen for nine innings to save their season 168 days ago, the Yankees will play their first game of 2026 on Wednesday.

I’m cautiously optimistic about the 2026 Yankees. It’s hard to be anything more than that when you return the same roster that was humiliated in the ALDS and the same manager who has overseen enormous failures and disappointments.

With the Yankees opening the season on Wednesday night in San Francisco, let’s get ready for the season with questions and comments from readers.

Is Grichuk and his right-handed bat a lock to be the fourth outfielder over Dominguez? – Rich

Rich asked this question last week before the roster had been determined. But as we all know now, Randal Grichuk is a Yankee and Dominguez is a RailRider.

I’m fine with Grichuk being a Yankee because it means he can’t play against the Yankees. Grichuk has an .825 OPS against the Yankees in his career. It’s why he has been a staple on my All-Animosity Team in recent years. Even last year when he had a down year and was playing for the Diamondbacks in the NL West, he still managed to win a game against the Yankees with a big, late-game double at Yankee Stadium in the first week of April. Grichuk owes Yankees fans a lot of big hits for all of the big hits he recorded against them in his career.

The Dominguez decision is depressing. I didn’t want Trent Grisham back and the Yankees either offered him the qualifying offer because they thought he wouldn’t accept it or because they were that worried Cody Bellinger would leave as a free agent. Grisham accepted it and Bellinger re-signed and Dominguez is the odd man out.

There’s a better chance Hal Steinbrenner goes against the idea of a salary cap when the current CBA expires than there is that Grisham hits 34 home runs again this season. Grisham had never hit more than 17 home runs in a season before last season and now the Yankees are clogging up a developmental lane for Dominguez (or Spencer Jones) with a player with a .720 career OPS. The Yankees have screwed up the development of their former top prospect in Dominguez as he is the latest Yankees prospect to be too good to trade, but not good enough to play for them.

When the Yankees want to give a top prospect a real chance they will stop at nothing to do so like they have with Anthony Volpe. If Volpe had Dominguez’s slash line last year of .257/.331/.388 there would already be a spot roped off for Volpe’s number 11 in Monument Park. I fully expect the Yankees to trade Dominguez and for him to realize his potential elsewhere.

How long will the leash be on Trent Grisham? – Mark

Look at how the Yankees have treated other high-priced veterans deserving of losing playing time to know how long Grisham’s leash will be. Grisham is making a lot of money in 2026 and will be given an unbelievably long leash. No matter how bad things get, Cashman and Boone will tell us he’s close and that the player who hit 34 home runs last season is in there, even if Grisham’s next-best full season is half of that total. Grisham could have a .600 OPS come the first week of May and he will still be leading off against righties. It will take a lot for him to become what he should be in a fourth outfielder.

I noticed in the international tournament that just went on that and some of the bigger games and crucial situations that Judge didn’t rise to the occasion? Am I being over critical? – Paul

You’re only being overly critical in that the World Baseball Classic is a meaningless tournament in which players play for countries they have the loosest of ties to and pitchers like Ryan Yarbrough are on Team USA. If the tournament mattered or meant something, Team USA would field an unbeatable team.

As for Judge, Americans who aren’t Yankees fans got to see what Judge does in the biggest of games, even if this time in came in March instead of October. I was at the Stadium in October when he hit the mammoth, three-run, game-tying home run in Game 3 of the ALDS, and while it was a great moment, it happened in Game 3 of the ALDS — 10 wins away from a championship. It was Judge’s at-bat in Game 1 of the ALDS that completely changed the series and his Game 3 home run ended up prolonging the season by a day before the offense was embarrassed by a fatigued Blue Jays bullpen game. Judge is a .294/.413/.615 hitter in the regular season and a .236/.346/.476 hitter in the postseason. The best postseason players have an equal or better OPS in the playoffs compared to the regular season and Judge’s postseason OPS is 200 points under his regular-season OPS.

It’s right in front of us. We turned the page on 2025. Hopefully we win the East and trounce the Dodgers in the World Series. – Dave

Sadly, we didn’t turn the page on 2025. There is nothing different about the end of the 2025 season and the start of the 2026 season. A few months without baseball didn’t make this roster better at baseball. The start of 2026 is just a continuation of the end of 2025. The Yankees made that so when they decided to bring back the same not-good-enough roster and then had the balls to tell everyone it’s not the same roster. Though that part shouldn’t come as a surprise since the Yankees have been spewing “championship-caliber” bullshit for years, believe internally that they won the 2017 World Series, continue to operate with the same manager and general manager and have an owner who said this winter that the franchise with the highest valuation in the sport (and possibly all sports if put up for sale) doesn’t turn a profit.

When do we replace 27 time world champion on the backstop with insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results? – WasWatching

If this change was going to happen, doing it after the 2021 season would have made the most sense.

Is there enough depth with both pitching and hitting given the age of the roster and injury history? – Michael

The depth of the team is Judge. If Judge goes down, the season goes down. It seems impossible that a baseball team and a $325 million roster could be so reliant on one single player, but the Yankees are. Not only is the roster built in a way that the entire season hinges on Judge’s health, but it also hinges on him playing at an MVP level. Judge can’t just be a superstar. He has to be an all-time great for the Yankees to get to where they want to go.

The Yankees do have pitching depth, but no team seems to have pitching depth for long. Carlos Rodon and then Gerrit Cole are expected back and while that sounds awesome, they both need to stay healthy and have no setbacks and then the starters that are available as of now need to stay healthy as well. The good news is Marcus Stroman and Carlos Carrasco aren’t making up 40 percent of the Opening Day rotation.

Luis Gil is currently the fifth starter and because the Yankees won’t need a fifth starter until mid-April, he won’t start the season in the majors. That’s problematic because Gil won the 2024 Rookie of the Year and started the only game the Yankees won in the 2024 World Series and then they made him untouchable last season. He followed up being untouchable by missing nearly the entire regular season and then pooped his pants on the mound at Rogers Centre in the ALDS. Now he’s behind Will Warren and Ryan Weathers in the starting pitching pecking order.

Same team, a year older, less wins. Predict 86 wins. – Tyler

In full season since 1995 the Yankees have failed to win at least 86 games only four times. Those four times are … 

2013 when Lyle Overbay (142 games), Vernon Wells (130), Chris Stewart (109), Eduardo Nunez (90), Jayson Nix (87) and Travis Hafter (82) played in the most games after Robinson Cano, 39-year-old Ichiro Suzuki and Brett Gardner …

2014 when Brian Cashman built an infield of 40-year-old Derek Jeter, .711 OPS Mark Teixeira, 36-year-old Brian Roberts and Yangervis Solarte …

2016 when not a single one of the nine players with the most games played at their position finished the season as a league-average hitter and the team sold at the deadline …

and 2023, when the Yankees posted their lowest full-season win total in 31 years and then brought back the manager who led the team to that three-decade-low win total.

(Joe Girardi deserves to be in the Hall of Fame for posting winning seasons with the 2013, 2014 and 2016 rosters).

A lot would have to go wrong for the Yankees to not win more than 86 games in 2026. Last season, they mailed in one-third of the season (like they always do under Boone) and won 94 games. I still think this team wins in the mid-90s. But if they don’t a lot of people should lose their jobs (many of whom should have lost them years ago).

Are we ready to put ourselves through this again? – Greg

Yes, we are. Beginning on Wednesday, there will be real Yankees baseball to write and talk about for at least the next six months. But do we know how this season likely ends because we have seen this same season many times now? Highly likely.

I have spent the week violently ill. It hasn’t been the flu. It hasn’t been a virus. It’s nothing antibiotics can treat. It’s been a physical, emotional and mental breakdown as a reaction to the news the Yankees have had trade discussions with the Rangers about Corey Seager.

Four years ago, coming off a season in which the Yankees were the odds-on favorite to win the American League and instead finished third in the division and fifth in the AL with their postseason lasting nine innings and their manager shockingly stating after that embarrassing wild-card loss that the “league has closed the gap on the Yankees” — despite having never won to that point as Yankees manager and still having not won four seasons later — I desperately wanted the Yankees to sign Seager.

By September 2021, Gleyber Torres had played his way off of shortstop and the Yankees were forced to start Andrew Velazquez at short in the one-game playoff at Fenway Park. The Yankees were without a shortstop for 2022 and their misevaluation of thinking Torres could be the long-term answer there had now caused roster construction issues as DJ LeMahieu had been given a six-year, $90 million deal to play second base prior to 2021. Now Torres would move to second and LeMahieu — the former Gold Glove second baseman — would become a third baseman/first baseman hybrid.

Over the course of baseball history — outside of four miserable nights in October 2004 — things have mostly broken in a favorable way for the Yankees, and needing a shortstop in the 2021-22 offseason happened to be the best time to ever need to sign a shortstop through free agency. The Yankees could fill the biggest need on their roster without depleting their farm system. All they would need was money — the resource they generate more of in revenue than every other team in the sport.

A 27-year-old Seager was the best available shortstop. The former Rookie of the Year, two-time All-Star, two-time Silver Slugger and 2020 World Series MVP had posted an .870 OPS in 636 regular-season games with the Dodgers. The prime of his career would match up perfectly with the primes of other star Yankees. Seager was undoubtedly the player to sign that offseason, but even if the Yankees didn’t sign him, there were plenty of other good options.

The Yankees didn’t sign Seager. They didn’t sign any of the alternatives either. The Rangers signed Seager to a $10-year, $325 million deal and added shortstop Marcus Semien on a seven-year, $175 million deal to play second base. The Rangers decided spending half-a-billion dollars on two shortstops and asking one of them to play second base would be better than their in-house option. Their in-house option was Isiah Kiner-Falefa and the Rangers traded him to the Twins. The Twins didn’t really want Kiner-Falefa, but they also lacked a shortstop and weren’t certain they would be able to sign any of the free agents because of their massive remaining commitment to Josh Donaldson of two years and $50 million. The Twins would need to find a team dumb enough to want Kiner-Falefa so badly they would take on the $50 million owed to Donaldson as well.

The Yankees traded Gary Sanchez and Gio Urshela to the Twins for Kiner-Falefa, Donaldson and his $50 million, and Ben Rortvedt, who would go on to post a negative WAR in 32 games with the Yankees. The Twins, now free of Donaldson’s contract, turned around and gave the money they saved on Donaldson to Carlos Correa. The Yankees were outmuscled by the Rangers financially in the free-agent market and then outsmarted by the Twins in the trade market.

In 2022, Seager was an All-Star and hit 33 home runs and Correa posted an .834 OPS. Kiner-Falefa was 16 percent worse than league average at the plate and a disaster in the field, leading to his eventual benching in the postseason. Donaldson posted career lows in runs, home runs, RBIs, batting average, on-base percentage, slugging percentage, OPS and OPS+, culminating in him striking out in 16 of 29 at-bats in the playoffs.

The reason the Yankees chose to not sign Seager or Correa or any of the available free-agent shortstops after 2021 had been a combination of Hal Steinbrenner not wanting to spend more of his inherited money on a business venture he has never wanted to be a part of and because of the organization’s belief in prospects Anthony Volpe and Oswald Peraza. The same baseball operations team and evaluators that believed Torres could play shortstop, that Hicks was worthy of a seven-year extension, didn’t feel the need to even meet with Bryce Harper as a free agent and believed taking on $50 million owed to a 37-year-old Donaldson was wise were being trusted in their assessments of Volpe and Peraza. Once again, they were wrong.

Volpe “won” the starting shortstop job in spring training 2023 because if he showed even a modicum of talent the Yankees were going to give him the job. There was no one else. Peraza’s glove was elite, but his bat was a Quadruple-A bat and there was no way the Yankees could go back to Kiner-Falefa after he was benched for Peraza and Oswaldo Cabrera in October. Volpe won the job for Opening Day, and despite being one of the worst, if not the worst everyday player in the majors since that day, he has never been benched, let alone sent down. Not even when the Yankees traded for Jose Caballero last season and Caballero greatly outplayed Volpe in September did Volpe sit in the postseason. The most recent memory of Volpe on a major-league field was him being pinch-hit for in his final at-bat of the 2025 playoffs, so he could be spared from being booed off his home field yet again after striking out 11 times in 15 at-bats in the ALDS.

In 2023, Volpe provided putrid offense, Kiner-Falefa finished with a 0 WAR and Donaldson was released, only after Aaron Boone spent the offseason calling any Yankees fan who didn’t think Donaldson could still hit “crazy.” The Yankees failed to qualify for the playoffs despite 40 percent of the league getting in and finished with the franchise’s worst record in three decades.

In Texas, Seager led the league in doubles (42), hit 33 home runs for a second straight year, hit .327/.390/.623 with a ridiculous 174 OPS+ and finished second in MVP voting to Shohei Ohtani. Seager then went on to hit .303/.439/.667 in the postseason with an 1.137 OPS in the World Series to win World Series MVP for the second time. He led the Rangers to the first championship in franchise history, helped unseat the Astros as the class of the AL (something the Yankees weren’t able to do) and the lasting image of the 2023 postseason is his monstrous two-run, game-tying home run in the ninth inning of Game 1.

Seager’s 10-year, $325 million contract has already been worth its entire value after four seasons. It was worth it after the first two. His $32.5 million average annual salary is nearly $17 million less than the Yankees paid Marcus Stroman ($18.5 million), DJ LeMahieu ($15 million), Aaron Hicks ($9,785,715) and Anthony Rizzo ($6 million) last season. Stroman gave the Yankees a 6.23 ERA and 72 baserunners in 39 innings, LeMahieu put up a .674 OPS (something Volpe would dream about) and couldn’t get to any ground ball not hit directly at him and Hicks and Rizzo made a combined $15.8 million not to play baseball. (Hicks is receiving another $1 million in 2026 to not play baseball.) His $32.5 million average annual salary is nearly equal to what the Yankees will pay Trent Grisham ($22 million), Paul Goldschmidt ($4 million), Volpe ($3.475 million) and Hicks ($1 million) this year. (I think my favorite thing about the Brian Cashman era has been how many players the Yankees pay to not play baseball at all or pay to play for other teams, and how many players never get another job after leaving the Yankees.)

So yeah, I’m sick over the idea the Yankees are trying to fix a franchise-altering mistake from four years ago that can’t be fixed without a time machine. The Yankees chose to waste prime years of their star, high-priced talent in a win-now window with Kiner-Falefa and then Volpe. Yes, having Seager in 2026 is better than not having Seager in 2026, but the idea of signing him four years ago and giving the Seagers generational wealth for all of time was paying him for his age 28, 29, 30, 31 and 32 seasons and knowing you would have to live with the second half of the contract. A soon-to-be 32-year-old Seager is still better than Volpe or whatever slop the Yankees plan to play at short until George Lombard Jr. is ready (if he’s ever ready and isn’t just another Yankees prospect that flames out), but getting Seager now, four years after the Yankees should have, is sickening.

Anthony Volpe won’t be on the Yankees’ Opening Day roster and will likely be out until May as he rehabs his shoulder following offseason surgery. I have yet to see any Yankees fan anywhere upset that Jose Caballero is going to be the Yankees’ starting shortstop to begin the season, and that’s all you need to know about where the fan base is when it comes to the player the Yankees still believe is going to be a star.

Unfortunately, there’s no chance Volpe will lose his job to Jose Caballero. There’s a better chance Hal Steinbrenner caves to putting an advertisement on the team’s iconic uniform. Oh wait. OK, there’s a better chance Hal Steinbrenner opens the Yankees’ books and lets the public see their profits. Caballero could have a March/April like Aaron Judge had last season (.427/.521/.761) and the moment Volpe comes off the injured list, he’s going right back to being the everyday shortstop. Aaron Boone has been asked if Volpe will go right back to being the everyday shortstop many times since the end of last season and every time he has essentially said he will without saying those exact words.

Boone hasn’t used those exact words because he wants Yankees fans to believe no one’s job is safe and that the idea of playing time based on performance exists within the team. But we all know that is a crock of shit. Just look at last September when the Yankees tried to act as if shortstop was an open competition down the stretch. Caballero played 18 games in September and had an .845 OPS and Volpe played 18 games and had a .534 OPS and Volpe still started every postseason game. He started every game of the ALDS despite going 1-for-15 with 11 strikeouts before mercifully being pinch hit for in the ninth inning of Game 4, so he wouldn’t have to endure being booed off his home field again. Caballero is a placeholder until Volpe is ready and nothing more no matter how well he plays.

“I just can’t wait to go back out there and play and help the team win,” Volpe said this week, though I’m not sure how often he has actually helped the team win over the last three seasons. “If I do that and play the way I know I can play, everything will take care of itself.”

Volpe shouldn’t want to play the way he knows he can play since to this point in his career he’s been 16 percent worse than the major-league average offensively. As for defensively, well who cares (even though he was atrocious defensively last year as well and has seemed to always commit an error in the biggest moments of games throughout his career)? Defensive shortstops grow on trees. If defense at shortstop were all that mattered, Oswald Peraza would be the Yankees’ starting shortstop and not another failed Yankees prospect. 

“I’m not really looking in the past,” Volpe said. “I just get excited about what it could be like when it’s all healed.”

Since Volpe doesn’t want to look in the past, I will do it for him.

Volpe said he felt a “pop” in his shoulder after diving for a ball in the Yankees’ May 3 game against the Rays last season.

“It happened quick and it was scary, but after that, I felt OK and I felt like I had my strength,” Volpe said after that game. “I’ve never really had anything else pop or displace or anything like that, so I have nothing to compare it to.”

Volpe remained in the game and then was sent for X-rays and an MRI, all of which came back as “good news,” Boone said at the time. Volpe was held out of the lineup the next day, but the day after that he went right back to being the Yankees’ everyday shortstop.

Volpe finished the regular season with a .212/.272/.391 slash line and an abysmal .663 OPS. It’s hard to chalk that level of non-major-league-caliber offense up to his shoulder injury, considering the Yankees and he both said he was fine, the Yankees said the imaging looked good and Volpe’s OPS over the previous two years had been .661. In 2025, he produced the most doubles in any of his three seasons, the most RBIs, the fewest strikeouts and the highest slugging percentage. Volpe with an injured shoulder was better than Volpe with a healthy shoulder.

And that’s why I’m not being fooled into thinking this surgery will have resolved some underlying issue that has him much closer to being an all-time Yankees bust rather than the long-term answer at shortstop. He has played in 472 regular-season games and been given 1,886 sad plate appearances with disappointing results, and yet, the Yankees continue to tell you he is going to be a star. I wish they were right. I wish Volpe were to become a star beginning this season. But based on his career performance to date — when healthy or not — there’s absolutely nothing to suggest he’s going to become a star and it takes being a stubborn front office employee of the Yankees or the biggest homer of the team possible to think otherwise.

If the same Volpe from the last three years — the one with the .222/.283/.379 career slash line — is the Volpe we see in 2026, what excuse will the Yankees have then? His shoulder won’t be a valid one since it’s been surgically repaired. Inexperience won’t be a valid one as he will finish the year with around 600 games played and just under 2,500 plate appearances to his name. If Volpe doesn’t produce like a former organizational No. 1 prospect and former No. 3 baseball prospect should in Year 4 it’s hard to believe he ever will. And it’s already hard to believe he ever will.