About Last Night: Picking Up Where They Left Off. NY 3. SF 0

About Last Night: Picking Up Where They Left Off. NY 3. SF 0

By Tim Kabel

March 28, 2026

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After the traditional day off after Opening Day, the Yankees acted as if it was a continuation of Wednesday's game. They shut out the Giants for the second straight game, this time by a score of 3-0. Aaron Judge ended his season long slump of 0-7 in the 6th inning by hitting a two-run home run. Prior to hitting the home run, Judge had a strike call overturned by the automated system. 

Two batters later, Giancarlo Stanton homered to greet Giants reliever Jose Butto. That ended the scoring for the game. The Giants have opened the season with eighteen scoreless innings at bat. That is the longest streak since 2019 when they went seventeen straight innings without scoring a run to begin the season. The longest in franchise history is twenty straight innings without a run to open the season in 1909.  My friend Roger remembers it well and was worried that the Giants wouldn't score any runs all season. He was in New York at the time after having served as the campaign manager for William Howard Taft. Will Warren has the chance to help the Giants set a new team record if he can hold them scoreless for three or more innings tomorrow.

Cam Schlittler also picked up where he left off in the postseason last year. He was on a limit of 70 pitches since he started Spring Training with some soreness and was slightly behind the other pitchers. That was the only thing in his way yesterday. He pitched 5.1 innings allowing one hit, a double to Heliot Ramos in the second inning. Schlittler didn't walk anyone and struck out eight.  Robbie Ray pitched well for the Giants but not well enough. Schlittler looks poised to have a big year. I am not saying that based on his one appearance yesterday. It is also based on how he pitched last year during the regular season and the postseason as well as his performances in Spring Training. He presents as being confident, capable, and focused. He seems to be a very competitive young man.

Fernando Cruz, Tim Hill, Camilo Doval, and David Bednar combined for 3.2 innings of hitless relief. Hill had two strikeouts and Duval struck out the side in the 8th inning.  

It was the second dominant performance by the Yankees to start the season. Will it last? There is no way to tell. They definitely will not have 162 shutout victories. However, there is reason to be optimistic regarding both Max Fried and Cam Schlittler. There was always reason to be optimistic about those two and they demonstrated that the optimism is well founded.

There were some areas of concern. I had jokingly suggested that we might see Randal Grichuk in this game. Well, there he was. Aaron Boone went with all his right-handed hitting options. He claimed that he only did it because the Yankees had only one left-handed pitcher scheduled against them in the six-game road trip to open the season and that was Robbie Ray. The Yankees had stated during the off-season and Spring Training that Ben Rice was going to be the everyday first baseman. Part of his development would be allowing him to play against left-handed pitchers. The fact that he was benched on the very first opportunity might mean absolutely nothing, or it could be a harbinger of things to come. Remember, last year Boone said that he was going to use Austin Wells as the leadoff hitter. That didn't last long. Using Ahmed Rosario over Ryan McMahon made sense but putting Grichuk in over Grisham was a bit of a head scratcher as well, since Grisham played almost every game last year. Again, it's just the second game and Boone presented what could be a reasonable explanation. However, Boone also said at the beginning of Spring Training that there were no injury concerns of any kind regarding the Yankees and then Schlittler had his health issues and Giancarlo Stanton couldn't open a bag of potato chips. The point is that Boone is as we used to say in my old job at DCF, “not a reliable source of information.” Anyway, I'm not going to quibble about the lineup, but it is something that bears watching.

A Few Tidbits:

·       Aaron Judge hit his fourth career home run off Robbie Ray.

·       The Giants are the first team to be shut out with five or fewer combined hits over the first two games of a season.

·       Aaron Judge was once again booed by the sellout home crowd of 40,273 because he decided to stay with the Yankees in December of 2022, instead of joining the Giants. Sour grapes make a fine whine.

The Yankees are off to a strong start and have already won their first series of the season. They look to go for the sweep tomorrow at 7:15 PM when Will Warren will face Tyler Mahle In San Francisco to wrap up the season series against the Giants.