Hitless coming into the day, Torres put on a show offensively, with three of the Yankees’ five hits, including a fourth-inning single that broke Corbin’s perfect game, a seventh-inning home run that knocked Corbin out of the game, and an eighth-inning RBI single that gave the Yankees the lead. A seventh-inning home run by Luke Voit off of Will Harris represented the only other offense for the Yankees on the day.
Fresh off a day in which they gave up six runs in seven innings, the Yankees’ bullpen rebounded well in today’s bullpen day. Jonathan Loaisiga, David Hale, Adam Ottavino, Chad Green, Tommy Kahnle, and Zack Britton combined togive up two runs on seven hits, striking out eight and walking four. Loaisiga’s only mistake on the afternoon in his three innings as the opener was a solo shot by Trea Turner with two outs in the third. Later, Kahnle pitched around runners on second and third with one out to preserve the lead in the bottom of the eighth, capping off the inning with a bases-loaded strikeout of Eric Thames.
Patrick Corbin put together a masterful performance for the Nationals, retiring the first eleven batters he faced and mowing through every Yankee batter not named Torres. In 6.1 innings, he recorded eight strikeouts, giving up only two hits and one run, and walking none. Having thrown only 75 pitches, Corbin looked to be on a complete game trajectory, but Nationals manager Dave Martinez had other ideas, removing him with one out in the seventh after giving up just his second hit of the day, a solo home run to Torres.
Defensive woes, however, almost cost the Yankees the game on three separate occasions. A misplay on a line drive by Voit that went through his legs gave the Nationals a 2-0 lead in the 4th. In the 8th, a throwing error by Torres sparked a brief Nationals rally that Kahnle barely escaped from, while in the ninth, a misplay by Torres and a passed ball put speedster Emilio Bonifacio on second base with nobody out. A fortunate turn of events, however, eliminated the threat.
Bonifacio beat the throw to third, but slid past the bag and was tagged out by Gio Urshela. Although Victor Robles walked on the play, Britton easily retired Yan Gomes and Michael Taylor to end the game.
Chad Green records the win, his first of the year, while Sean Doolittle gets tagged with the loss. Interim closer Zack Britton collects his first save of the season, the 146th of his career and seventh as a Yankee. Having opened the season by taking two of three from the reigning World Series champs — winning both games against some of the league’s best pitchers in the process — the Yankees now head to Philadelphia to begin a four-game, two-city set.
J.A. Happ gets the ball for the Yankees tomorrow against Jake Arrieta and the Phillies, who dropped two of three against the Miami Marlins. First pitch tomorrow is scheduled for 7:05 PM.
At 7:05 pm tonight, the New York Yankees will meet the Philadelphia Phillies at Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia. Citizen’s Bank Park is one of the most beautiful baseball parks in MLB. It’s especially fun for kids; they have a full interactive baseball experience for kids just off of the left field. Another feature is the famous Philadelphia food stands. Tonight will be the first of a four-game series, two in Philadelphia and two at Yankee Stadium.
The last time the New York Yankees played a significant game at Citizen’s Bank Park was in the 2009 World Series. It was the last time that the Yankees won a World Series. Joe Torre was the manager back then, now the ex-Yankee skipper Joe Girardi is in his first year as manager of the Phillies.
This year the Phillies have earned the nickname Yankees south. Along with Joe Girardi, ex-Yankees Andrew McCutchen, Ronald Torreyes, Neil Walker, and Didi Gregorius all now manage or play for the Phillies.
Tonight’s game will start under partly sunny skies with a field temperature in the mid-’90s, cooling off to the high-’80s by games end. There is no chance of rain this evening.
Tonight right-hand pitcher Jake Arrieta will face the New York Yankees J.A. Happ. The last time Arrieta faced the Yankees was during May of 2018. He gave up all six runs of a Yankee 6-0 shutout by Yankee pitcher Luis Severino and led to the three-game Yankees sweep of the Phillies. He gave up six runs in just five innings.
Arrieta, in 2018 was 10-11 with an ERA 3.96. Last year in 24 appearances, he was 8-8 with an ERA of 4.64. If the Yankees win any of the four games, tonight should be the one the Yankees walk away with. Arrieta missed the second half of last season after pitching the first half with bone spurs in his elbow. He said he is feeling fine and ready to have a strong season in the final year of his contract. Tonight will be his first test.
J. A. Happ will take the mound for the New York Yankees. This will be his first start in the 14th year of his major league career. Happ last year was somewhat of a disappointment to the Yankees going only 12-8 after his 2018 Yankee campaign when he went 7-0 in eleven starts. However, a good sign for the Yankees is that he was their best pitcher in summer camp. In 13 spring innings, Happ worked to a 1.38 ERA while allowing only one homer.
Happ will be most concerned tonight in keeping the ball in Citizen’s Bank Park; he had trouble with that last season. He will also have to watch out for Jean Segura, who has a .800 record off the lefty. Interestingly he will most likely face ex-Yankee Didi Gregorius in tonight’s lineup. Gregorius has faced Happ 20 times and only batted .100 off him.
In the last game at Citizen’s Bank Park, tomorrow night at 6:05 pm Yankee ace Gerrit Cole will face the Phillies Zack Eflin. Wednesday night at 7:05 pm will be Opening Day of the season at Yankee Stadium. The Phillies will face Yankee pitcher Jordan Montgomery.
@MarlyRiveraESPN Aroldis Chapman got tested again for COVID-19 and the test was negative, sources tell ESPN. Individuals need to test negative on at least two separate tests, and be cleared by club medical staff and a Joint Committee selected by MLB and the MLBPA,... https://es.pn/3hCj1EO
The Verge | Kim Lyons: Remember when Amazon acquired the rights to stream 21 Yankees games this year? The coronavirus pandemic threw a wrench into the plan. Due to the shortened season, Prime members won’t be able to stream any games in 2020. Amazon plans to review their options moving forward after the conclusion of the season.
It wasn’t stellar, but the Bronx Bombers kicked off the abbreviated 2020 season well. The team won two of three games against the defending World Series champion Washington Nationals.
All in all, the Yankees performed as expected. The lineup put together productive at-bats and the pitching staff prevailed despite some early signs of adversity. Next, they will take on former manager Joe Girardi and his Philadelphia Phillies.
They aren’t in full Bronx Bombers form yet, but just watch. This is a Yankees team capable of some special things. Let’s take a look back at Opening Weekend and see just what can be learned from the first three games.
The Gerrit Cole hype is real
General manager Brian Cashman can breathe a sigh of relief. One start in, his $324 million investment in right-handed ace Gerrit Cole is paying off on the mound. In the season’s rain-shortened opener, Cole notched five strikeouts in a five-inning, complete-game one-hitter in a 4-1 victory.
And Cole wasn’t particularly sharp with his location. He hit and walked one batter each and only threw 46 of his 75 pitches for strikes. Even so, Washington hitters made weak contact and New York built a lead early.
Granted, this is only one start, but Cole still did exactly what the Yankees signed him for, and that’s keep runs off the board and opposing hitters at bay.
The Savages remain…
Another MLB season, another year in which the Yankees are expected to score a significant number of runs. Based on early returns, the lineup can once again expect to be, as manager Aaron Boone put it last year, “savages in the box.”
This was evident from Opening Day on Thursday. Washington sent three-time Cy Young winner Max Scherzer to the mound, a man who’s led the National League or MLB in K/BB ratio four of the last five years. Though the man they call “Mad Max” struck out 11 Yankee hitters, he also issued four walks and allowed four runs on six hits.
Leading the way in all of this was Giancarlo Stanton, back and in great shape after a lost and injury-riddled 2019. He hit two home runs this weekend, one of which traveled an estimated 483 feet. Needless to say, if Stanton and Aaron Judge are in top form, the Yankees are going to do a lot of damage at the plate.
…but give the bats time
And even though Stanton is hitting balls capable of denting the TARDIS while it’s parked on Mars, the rest of the New York lineup is still settling in right now. The Yankees are only hitting .200 as a team through three games. This can be attributed to a subpar showing in Saturday’s 9-2 loss and not being able to solve Nationals lefty Patrick Corbin for most of Sunday.
More striking is the Yankees’ collective OBP of .272. For a team taking two out of three games from the defending champs to start the season, good at-bats were hard to come by for the most part. For context, Corbin and Saturday replacement starter Erick Fedde did a great job inducing soft contact. Corbin himself had a nearly 2:1 strike-to-ball ratio Sunday and averaged less than 13 pitches per inning over 6.1 frames.
Considering the Yankees ranked fourth in OBP last year, the slow showing this weekend is indeed daunting.
Take a deep breath, New York fans. Everything’s going to be fine. Judge’s .167 batting average may seem scary, but he only recently started swinging a bat again. The whole team also spent nearly three months in limbo waiting for baseball to start up again. There’s going to be a greater rust factor than what we’re used to seeing.
When the lineup is performing at its best, it will be all the more satisfying to see.
The bullpen still has it
Over two games where the bats looked sluggish, the Yankees can take solace in one thing: the infamous New York bullpen still has it. The relief corps’ ERA is a bit high at 4.84, but put it in context. Mike King entered during the second inning after James Paxton didn’t have it Saturday, and he allowed four earned runs in three innings. Ben Heller and Luis Avilán also allowed home runs in garbage time.
Sunday, however, told a different story. After Jonathan Loaisiga allowed a single run in three innings as an opener, a combination of five arms kept Washington at bay. Tommy Kahnle got three big strikeouts to hold the Yankees’ lead in the eighth inning, including one with the bases loaded. Zack Britton, serving as closer while Aroldis Chapman recovers from COVID-19, also worked out of trouble thanks to some heads-up fielding.
Look at it this way. Even with a 4.84 unit ERA, the bullpen still put up a mark of 1.50 on Sunday. More importantly, ESPN’s Marly Rivera reported Saturday that Chapman has finally tested negative for COVID-19 after first testing positive July 11. One more negative test means he can return to the team.
Just imagine. A fully healthy Yankees lineup with Judge, Stanton, Gleyber Torres, Gary Sanchez, everyone fully locked in day-in and day-out. Once plenty of runs are on the board and the starting pitcher has done his part, the equally dangerous bullpen takes over.
That’s a recipe for a championship, especially in an abbreviated 60-game season, so don’t let the sluggish start fool you. The Yankees’ season-opening series leaves plenty to be excited about.
Last night, the Yankees announced they optioned outfielder Clint Frazier and right-handed reliever Ben Heller to their alternate training site. The club plans to bring right-handers Nick Nelson and Brooks Kriske up to the active roster in their stead. They’ll add a pair of fresh arms to a pitching staff that saw James Paxton work just one-plus inning in Saturday’s loss to the Nationals.
So continues Frazier’s repeated journeys on and off the big league roster. The onetime top prospect has been decent offensively, albeit with some high-profile defensive issues, when he’s gotten MLB opportunities (career .254/.308/.463 line in 429 plate appearances). Still, he’s had a hard time cracking a loaded Yankees outfield.
Given his immense power potential, the 25-year-old has long been rumored as a potential trade candidate. Thus far, the organization has expressed little interest in giving him up. Given the club’s competitive outlook, though, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see his name floated in rumors again this season. Yesterday’s demotion doesn’t suggest the organization has soured on Frazier long-term, but it does underscore the difficulty for him in carving out an immediate, significant role in the Bronx.
Nelson and Kriske, meanwhile, will each make their MLB debut if/when they get into a game. Each posted strong strikeout and run prevention numbers in Double-A in 2019, albeit with slightly elevated walk rates.
They should trade him before the screw his head up...
CBS Sports | R.J. Anderson: Almost 40 percent of the Miami Marlins’ active roster has tested positive for COVID-19 in the last couple of days. In total, 11 of the 33 players who traveled to Philadelphia, plus two coaches, have the virus. Despite the clear outbreak, MLB has no plans to suspend the season as of now. Rob Manfred and the owners had a conference call on Monday afternoon, and the idea of stopping the season wasn’t discussed. Instead, they talked about redoubling health directives, such as players wearing masks in the clubhouse, and reinforcing “on-field behavior prohibitions” against things like high fives and spitting.
MLB.com | Alyson Footer: Speaking about Philadelphia, the Phillies played the Marlins over the weekend in Citizens Bank Park. Guess who is the Yankees’ next foe? Yes, the Phillies. And where? Yes, at Citizens Bank Park. Yesterday’s tilt was postponed, and tonight’s game could be in jeopardy. The Marlins used the visiting clubhouse that the Yankees would have used yesterday.
MLB Network | Tom Verducci: Yesterday, it was announced that the Miami Marlins won’t be playing today vs. the Baltimore Orioles, in addition to last night’s suspended game. The league is hoping that Miami is able to resume play on Wednesday at Camden Yards instead of Marlins Park, although that would depend on several things — such as the Maryland government and another round of tests.
Lean into the craziness of this fever-dream season.
There was a flurry of news in the hours before before the first pitch of the 2020 season. Mookie Betts signed a huge extension in Los Angeles, and Nationals star Juan Soto tested positive for COVID-19. Perhaps the biggest news of the day, and the one that changes the landscape of the game the most, is the expanded playoff structure agreed to by MLB and the players association.
Craig Edwards gives his breakdown of the entire deal at FanGraphs, but here are the key points:
16 Playoff Teams
Division winners will receive the top three seeds in each league
Second-place division finishers will receive the 4-6 seeds in each league
The two teams in each league with the best records apart from those six will be the seventh and eighth seeds
The top four seeds in each league will host every game in a best-of-three Wild Card Series to advance to the Division Series
To put this in the context of 2019, the eight AL playoff teams would have been the three division winners — the Astros, Yankees and Twins — followed by the second place division teams — Oakland, Tampa and Cleveland — and then the last two “wild card” teams would be Boston and Texas. Boston ended the year with 84 wins, Texas with 78. Houston would have hosted three games against the Rangers, the Yankees would have played three at home against Boston, etc.
Over 162 games, I hate this idea.
Baseball is a game that needs a large sample size for all the randomness to wear out. The whole point of 162 games is to let that happen, and then only allow the best teams into the playoffs. Using 2019 as an example, the sub-.500 Texas Rangers would have a chance, however small, of winning the World Series despite all the evidence to the contrary that they don’t belong in the same class of clubs as the Astros, Yankees or Dodgers.
But we’re not playing 162 games.
Baseball needs to lean into the chaos and confusion of the 60-game season. It already flies in the face of what baseball usually looks like, so you might as well do it with the playoffs as well. Moreso than just accepting the weirdness of 2020, though, I think this playoff format for this season actually helps the game, in the same way that adopting it for 2021 would hurt.
This has been a hard season for sports fans. Baseball already is well-known for an older fanbase, and overly reliant on legacy media for distribution. A messy squabble over finances made a lot of fans dissuaded with the state of the game, and for some reason, people of a particular demographic are angry that baseball players would like a more just and equal society. Of course there’s also a looming CBA negotiation that’s likely to be one of the more contentious of our lifetime.
What better way to assuage some of these concerns — some quite legitimate, one not — over the future of the game than by expanding the possible number of interested fans? Yankee fans or Dodger fans were already going to be invested in this season, since both squads are World Series favorites.
But what about the “bubble” teams, those clubs that wouldn’t have sniffed the postseason under the conventional structure, but benefit the most from expansion? The White Sox, Red Sox, Athletics and Angels all saw their playoff odds jump more than 30% upon the announcement. These are teams, and by extension fanbases, that might have been completely checked out over the final two weeks of the season, and will now experience meaningful baseball.
Again, in 162 games, I don’t particularly care if a team has meaningful baseball in September, since they’ve had 130 games up to that point to prove they deserve it. In a sprint season, though, where the MVP is going to have 18 home runs, I can’t really find myself the energy to care about “deserve”.
I don’t ever want to see 16 playoff teams in a full season. But really, all that matters for baseball in 2020 is that everyone stays healthy, and the game helps repair some of the damage its done to itself over the last eight months. Baseball has a relatively captive audience, and the chance to keep them engaged in a way that hasn’t existed before. That’s worth some hand-wringing over the “legitimacy” of a title.
Lastly, in a roundabout way, expanded playoffs may give teams an out to take COVID more seriously. The more teams make the playoffs, the less each individual game matters, the more seriously teams can take the protocols and procedures around a positive COVID test. If the Phillies are one game out of the old Wild Card spot and Bryce Harper tests positive, it creates some pretty gross moral hazard around how the team approaches it. More teams in the playoffs mitigates that.
In the end, my thoughts on expanded playoffs are virtually identical to Sam Miller’s:
The pandemic has changed all our lives, and baseball is one way we might have an outlet from it. The game needs as much engagement and excitement as it can manage right now, and having as many clubs competitive all season as possible is the best way to do that.
Last night, the Yankees announced they optioned outfielder Clint Frazier and right-handed reliever Ben Heller to their alternate training site. The club plans to bring right-handers Nick Nelson and Brooks Kriske up to the active roster in their stead. They’ll add a pair of fresh arms to a pitching staff that saw James Paxton work just one-plus inning in Saturday’s loss to the Nationals.
So continues Frazier’s repeated journeys on and off the big league roster. The onetime top prospect has been decent offensively, albeit with some high-profile defensive issues, when he’s gotten MLB opportunities (career .254/.308/.463 line in 429 plate appearances). Still, he’s had a hard time cracking a loaded Yankees outfield.
Given his immense power potential, the 25-year-old has long been rumored as a potential trade candidate. Thus far, the organization has expressed little interest in giving him up. Given the club’s competitive outlook, though, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see his name floated in rumors again this season. Yesterday’s demotion doesn’t suggest the organization has soured on Frazier long-term, but it does underscore the difficulty for him in carving out an immediate, significant role in the Bronx.
Nelson and Kriske, meanwhile, will each make their MLB debut if/when they get into a game. Each posted strong strikeout and run prevention numbers in Double-A in 2019, albeit with slightly elevated walk rates.
They should trade him before the screw his head up...
Frazier is going to make them pay big time if they trade him. The guys bat is going to be sick when he gets the opportunity and his trade value is garbage right now
Last night, the Yankees announced they optioned outfielder Clint Frazier and right-handed reliever Ben Heller to their alternate training site. The club plans to bring right-handers Nick Nelson and Brooks Kriske up to the active roster in their stead. They’ll add a pair of fresh arms to a pitching staff that saw James Paxton work just one-plus inning in Saturday’s loss to the Nationals.
So continues Frazier’s repeated journeys on and off the big league roster. The onetime top prospect has been decent offensively, albeit with some high-profile defensive issues, when he’s gotten MLB opportunities (career .254/.308/.463 line in 429 plate appearances). Still, he’s had a hard time cracking a loaded Yankees outfield.
Given his immense power potential, the 25-year-old has long been rumored as a potential trade candidate. Thus far, the organization has expressed little interest in giving him up. Given the club’s competitive outlook, though, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see his name floated in rumors again this season. Yesterday’s demotion doesn’t suggest the organization has soured on Frazier long-term, but it does underscore the difficulty for him in carving out an immediate, significant role in the Bronx.
Nelson and Kriske, meanwhile, will each make their MLB debut if/when they get into a game. Each posted strong strikeout and run prevention numbers in Double-A in 2019, albeit with slightly elevated walk rates.
They should trade him before the screw his head up...
Frazier is going to make them pay big time if they trade him. The guys bat is going to be sick when he gets the opportunity and his trade value is garbage right now
Clint will be part of the team next year. He is too valuable to trade if his trade stock is too low like you wrote.
In addition to the Phillies being paused through Friday and the Marlins being paused until Monday, the Orioles and Yankees are now indeed likely to play one another on Wednesday and Thursday, Joel Sherman tweets. The Nationals, meanwhile, won’t have a game at all this weekend, since they’d been slated to play the Marlins.
