1. I feared Nestor Cortes shutting down the Yankees on Saturday at the Stadium the way so many ex-Yankees have over the years. My fear was all for nothing as Cortes did his best to repay Yankees fans for the Freddie Freeman walk-off grand slam he allowed in Game 1 of the World Series. Cortes will never be able to completely make up that moment to Yankees fans (though the blame is really more on Aaron Boone for using Cortes in that spot after he hadn’t pitched in weeks), but his performance in the second game of the season was a good start.
2. The first three pitches Cortes threw were all hit out of the park. First, it was Paul Goldschmidt, then it was Cody Bellinger, and finally, Aaron Judge. My four-year-old son who was in attendance with me and taking in his second game in the Bronx was stunned. As “X Gon’ Give It To Ya” played again and again and again and the crowd enjoying the 80-degree March weather went wild, my son trying to process what was happening looked at me with an expression of ‘Does this happen at every game?’
Sadly, it doesn’t. But after the back-to-back-to-back home runs had Cortes sitting on an infinite ERA three batters into his season, Austin Wells hit one out three batters after Judge. The next inning, Anthony Volpe did the same. Cortes was removed from the game after facing one batter in the third, and left having allowed eight earned runs, 11 baserunners and five home runs, while recording just six outs.
3. Amazingly, the power barrage didn’t end there. After Cortes was removed for walking Jasson Dominguez, Connor Thomas entered for his major-league debut and allowed a Trent Grisham single then hit Paul Goldschmidt with a pitch. Bellinger singled in Dominguez and Judge followed with a grand slam. Three pitches later with the crowd still celebrating Judge’s slam, Jazz Chisholm drilled a solo homer. The Yankees led 13-3 and had hit seven home runs. It was the third inning.
The next inning, Bellinger drove in another run and Judge hit another home run, his third in as many at-bats. The Yankees led 16-4 and had hit eight home runs. It was the fourth inning.
In the seventh, Oswald Peraza hit the Yankees’ ninth home run of the day, setting a franchise record for a single game.
4. After surviving the ninth inning on Opening Day, the Yankees blasted the Brewers 20-9 on Saturday. In a game that was essentially over in the second inning and had the floodgates blown open in the third inning, it wasn’t a game that lacked criticism for the Yankees. The same type of sloppy defense that we saw throughout 2024 (and have seen throughout the Boone era) was on full display in this one. The Yankees made five errors in the game, had trouble fielding ground balls and throwing to first base. Max Fried wasn’t sharp (4.2 IP, 7 H, 6 R, 2 ER, 2 BB, 4 K), but he got zero help behind him.
5. During the game, the YES booth went into the Yankees’ use of the “torpedo” bat designed by an MIT physicist and former Yankees employee. They explained how the team had developed new bats based on where their players were most likely to make contact with the ball. For players like Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm who were shown using the bat, that happened to be on the label.
The Yankees’ analytics team has finally used their intelligence for good. After years of creating fictional stats to try to sell on the fans on the notion Gleyber Torres is among the best defensive second basemen in the game, that Joey Gallo is worth trading for and that taking on the $53 million owed to Josh Donaldson would be worth it, the brains behind the scenes did something great with the invention of the torpedo. With it, Volpe (.952 OPS) is a major-league hitter and Chisholm (1.667 OPS) is hitting like the left-handed Judge. Bellinger (1.057 OPS) is using some form of it, as is Goldschmidt (1.250 OPS). I love the torpedo bat.
6. Maybe the Yankees were going to destroy Brewers pitching to open the series no matter what. (It’s not like the trio of Freddy Peralta, Cortes and Aaron Civale is anything special.) And maybe with the weather being what it was on Saturday, feeling like mid-June in late March, the ball was going to fly out of the park with 90-mph middle-middle meatballs being thrown. But I would like to think the torpedo bat is what led to this because I want to be proud of the Yankees’ analytics department.
7. After going 4-for-6 with a double, three home runs and eight RBIs on Saturday, Judge, who isn’t using the torpedo bat, homered in his first at-bat on Sunday, which made the wind in the Bronx less annoying as the weather had turned back into what late-March weather is expected to be.
The two-run shot gave the Yankees a 2-1 lead after Marcus Stroman unsurprisingly allowed a first-inning run. The Yankees added to their lead in the second when Ben Rice hit a solo home run, and added more in the third when Chisholm hit a two-run home run. After homering on Saturday and in the third inning on Sunday, Chisholm, the face of the torpedo bat, hit his third home run of the weekend in the seventh inning, and the Yankees went on to win 12-3. Again, I love the torpedo bat.
8. I’m sure by the end of this week (and maybe by Monday’s games) many players throughout the league will be trying out a version of the torpedo bat. When you hit 15 home runs and score 36 runs in 24 innings at a time of year when pitching is supposed to dominate, people tend to notice.
9. Going into this season-opening series I figured Boone would be able to lean on Luke Weaver and Devin Williams more than he normally would with a day off on Wednesday and Friday and Monday. Williams took himself out of the equation for the rest of the weekend with his Opening Day performance and Judge and the torpedo made it so Weaver wasn’t needed for the rest of the weekend as well.
Aside from Williams’ self-created mess on Thursday, the bullpen (including only real relievers and not Carrasco who threw two innings on Saturday) shut out the Brewers. Weaver, Tim Hill, Mark Leiter Jr., Yoendrys Gomez, Fernando Cruz, Brent Hendrick and Ryan Yarbrough combined for this line: 9.1 IP, 3 H, 0 R, 0 ER, 2 BB, 14 K. For a bullpen that lost Clay Holmes and Tommy Kahnle and is waiting on Jonathan Loaisiga and Jake Cousins, that will work.
10. I don’t think the Yankees can count on double-digit runs this Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night against the Diamondbacks. In the Yankees’ favor is the Diamondbacks having to go from spring training to their indoor home in Arizona to now the freezing Bronx where temperatures are supposed to be postseason-like aside from Thursday. In the Diamondbacks’ favor is the trio of Corbin Burnes, Zac Gallen and Merrill Kelly, who are all scheduled to start. The Yankees plan to counter with Will Warren, Carlos Rodon and Carlos Carrasco. At best, the pitching matchup in the second game of the series is even, otherwise the Diamondbacks have a massive edge on the mound with their three best. But their best has yet to face the torpedo bats.
Last modified: Mar 31, 2025
