1. The last nearly five months were long. Sure, the Yankees’ offseason was shorter than every team other than the Dodgers, but it didn’t feel that way.
First, it was the depression of reaching and losing the World Series, and losing it in such embarrassing and humiliating fashion. Then there was losing it to the Dodgers, my wife’s team, her family’s team. The team I have spent the 13 years I have known her chirping her for having never won a “real” World Series in her life and having not won a “real” one since 1988. (Of course that drought ended at the Yankees’ expense.)
The weeks following the World Series were filled with hearing her watching the Freddie Freeman Game 1 grand slam on a seemingly endless loop on the other side of the bed and listening to countless interviews of Dodgers players mocking the Yankees for their fifth-inning meltdown in Game 5.
I have spent some part of every day since thinking about what could have been in the World Series. What could have been if Aaron Boone hadn’t pulled Gerrit Cole early in Game 1 and gone to Nestor Cortes instead of Tim Hill. What could have been if Aaron Judge could catch a fly ball, if Anthony Volpe could make a basic throw to third base and if Cole could have covered first. Twenty years after the Yankees performed the only 3-0 series collapse in baseball history, I still believe they would have pulled it off if not for that fifth inning. My belief was only made stronger when Dave Roberts agreed over the winter, saying his team’s pitching would have been in a bad place if a Game 6 had been forced.
Then came the departure of Juan Soto. Then there was the Yankees’ disregard for signing a healthy, proven starting third baseman. While the offseason was technically the shortest the Yankees have experienced in 15 years, it felt a lot longer. I needed the 2025 season to start. I needed the Yankees to have a new last game that wasn’t the Game 5 of the World Series. I needed Opening Day.
2. I was in complete agreement with the Yankees when they announced Austin Wells would be their leadoff hitter this season (at least against righties). Unlike Yankees’ lineup decisions in the past like making Aaron Hicks the No. 3 hitter in 2021 (and then laughing at the media for questioning it when he started that season 1-for-15 with seven strikeouts, only for him to be removed from the spot two weeks into the season) or making Volpe the leadoff hitter despite being one of the worst everyday hitters in the league or rolling with Alex Verdugo as the cleanup hitter for an extended period despite being the actual worst everyday hitter in the league, putting Wells at leadoff made sense.
“It’s kind of exciting just getting to hit in front of Aaron Judge and trying to get on base for him,” Wells said of hitting leadoff. “I think that’s helped me a little bit mindset-wise, just getting on base any way I can.”
Wells at leadoff makes sense, simply because of his on-base percentage. The Yankees are starved for bats that get on base consistently, and outside of Judge, Wells is the next best on the team at it. Add in his power and the threat of giving the Yankees an early lead and Wells at leadoff works.
It certainly worked on Opening Day when he gave the Yankees that early lead, sending the third pitch of the year from Freddy Peralta into the short porch.
“To go out there and give us an early lead with that swing, we’ve seen it all spring,” Judge said. “He set the tone for the whole day for us.”
It wasn’t just a day of offense for Wells. Behind the plate he called a game that produced 13 strikeouts.
“I thought Wells was great with the pitch calling,” Carlos Rodon said. “He calls the pitches and I just roll. There’s not much decision-making on my part.”
3. If Rodon being able to have facial hair is all he needed to unlock the pitcher he was before he became a Yankee then they should have changed the policy two years ago. Rodon was getting swings and misses from all over the Brewers’ lineup, finishing with seven strikeouts and only one earned run on six baserunners across 5 1/3 innings.
“Really sharp command-wise,” Boone said of Rodon. “Good presence with everything. I thought he was really in command of his motions.”
Not only his motions, but Rodon kept his emotions in check and prevented the patented unraveling that seems to come in all of his starts when things don’t completely go his way from start to finish. Instead of letting a couple of baserunners turn into a crooked number, he kept getting outs.
4. If you thought Boone’s latest contract extension would change him as a manager, there he was sending Rodon back out for the sixth inning to face the 2-3-4 hitters for a third time. With a day off on Friday and one coming on Monday, the Yankees would be able to use their bullpen more than they would at most parts of the season. When Rodon went back out for the sixth, the Yankees held a one-run lead. I thought after he walked Christian Yelich he would be pulled, but he wasn’t. I thought after he retired William Contreras he would pulled, but he wasn’t. Boone then let him face the right-handed Rhys Hoskins, who has the most career plate appearances of any Brewer against Rodon and has had concerning success against him in those plate appearances. Rodon walked Hoskins and then Boone pulled him.
5. The middle relief of the Yankees was outstanding. Tim Hill got the last two outs of the sixth and keep Rodon’s ERA in tact. Mark Leiter Jr. pitched a perfect seventh, striking out two. Luke Weaver pitched around a walk in the eighth and struck out two. And then there was Devin Williams.
I called Williams the best reliever in baseball when the Yankees traded for him this winter. He came to the Yankees with 375 strikeouts and a 1.83 ERA and 1.023 WHIP in 235 2/3 career innings. In his Yankees debut, it felt like I was watching Clay Holmes still. (It was refreshing to see Holmes struggle in his Mets debut as their Opening Day starter in Houston.)
A three-run lead in the cold with the Brewers’ 6-7-8 hitters due up is as optimal as it gets for making your debut with a new team on a new mound in a new uniform in a new stadium. It couldn’t have been a better situation for Williams to ask for to get his feet wet as a Yankee, and he nearly ruined it.
A single, double and walk loaded the bases with no outs for the Brewers. The game had gone from nice, smooth Opening Day win to the tying run being on base and the winning run being at the plate. It’s not an exaggeration to think if the Brewers took the lead against Williams and went on to win that it would end up being the worst loss of the season.
Thankfully, it didn’t come to that. Williams got a sacrifice fly for the first out and then went on to strike out Jackson Chourio and Yelich to end the game, almost as if he was fucking with everyone to that point. After throwing 36 pitches in winter-like weather in the first game of the season, it wouldn’t surprise me if Williams is now down for the rest of this series.
“Love that he didn’t break,” Boone said (as we all know Holmes would have broke last year). “I was getting very uncomfortable to where he was from a pitch count standpoint.”
6. The Volpe we watched in the first two series of 2024 (against Houston and Arizona), and the Volpe we watched in the postseason in October is unlike the Volpe we have seen in roughly 94 percent of his 333 career games. The six-percent Volpe is the Volpe that played on Thursday. He may have only gone 1-for-4, but the one was a home run, and he saw 20 pitches in his four at-bats.
Volpe had an 83 OPS+ in his first two seasons. At 17 percent worse than league average, he is much closer to being a bust at this point than the franchise shortstop the Yankees have made him out to be over the last two years. For Volpe to take that next step, he’s going to need to have a lot more games like he had in Houston and Arizona to open last season and in the postseason and on Thursday.
7. Paul Goldschmidt, wearing No. 48, may as well be the right-handed Anthony Rizzo: a once-great player who became a Yankee in the middle of an obvious decline in abilities. Goldschmidt did his best to honor Rizzo’s 48 in the field by not taking the ball to first himself with Rodon on the mound and at the plate by going for 0-for-4 with two strikeouts in four non-competitive at-bats. Sure, it’s one game, but when you have been in decline for two full seasons as a player and when you have been scarred as a fan by recent organizational belief in Hicks, Josh Donaldson and DJ LeMahieu, it’s hard not to think about Goldschmidt not working out.
8. Goldschmidt wasn’t the only hitless Yankee in the opener. Jazz Chisholm was swinging for the fences like he did in October and Jasson Dominguez went 0-for-3 before being removed for defense late in the game. I understand wanting to get Grisham into games as often as possible to keep him fresh (he picked up a single in his only at at-bat), but is Dominguez going to be removed early in every game the Yankees lead? Based on Cody Bellinger’s comments after the game saying he knew he would be shifting from center to left late, it seems like that is Boone’s plan.
9. Judge and Bellinger both had hits in the game and the duo extended the Yankees’ lead from one to three in the seventh. Ben Rice looked good at the plate (double and walk), Oswaldo Cabrera hit a few balls on the screws and picked up a single. Overall, it was a pleasant first game of the season aside from the first three batters Williams faced in the ninth.
10. It’s annoying there’s no game on Friday for the scheduled day off in the event of an Opening Day rainout. But there’s a game on Saturday and another on Sunday. And another on Tuesday and Wednesday and so on. Yankees baseball is back, and after the way last season ended, the first game of this season and the way it went was needed.
Last modified: Mar 28, 2025
