There are a lot of unreliable things about this era of Yankees baseball, but there’s always one thing that they seem to do every year. While some teams are sluggish out of the gates, the Yankees always manage to go full speed to start the season.
For the third straight year, the Yankees have swept their opening series of the season and they’ve done it in three different ways. In 2024, they rode clutch plays on both sides of the ball to a sweep over the hated Astros. In 2025, they pummeled the eventual
NL Central champion Brewers into submission with those newfangled torpedo bats. This year? Their pitching absolutely flummoxed the Giants.
While they came up short of the ever-elusive series shutout, the Yankees allowed just one run total in the three games in San Francisco, as Will Warren and the bullpen carried over good work from Wednesday and Friday en route to a 3-1 win against the San Francisco Giants. Ben Rice got things started with an early two-run double, Aaron Judge went deep again, and the Yankees’ infield turned four clutch double plays to continually deny the Giants’ offense.
Tyler Mahle started this game off by getting a pair of outs against Judge and Trent Grisham, but gave up a long triple to Cody Bellinger into Triple’s Alley to give Rice a chance for his first RBI of the year, but the Yankees’ first baseman chopped a ball to shortstop to end the inning.
Warren took the bump and looked to answer with a zero of his own and got off to a good start, but things nearly unraveled on him. Singles by Luis Arraez and Rafael Devers, along with the usually one-dimensional Arraez stealing third and nearly forcing a balk with his theatrics, put an amped-up Warren in a jam. In a lengthy at-bat with Heliot Ramos, Warren reared a 97 mph fastball by him in the 10th pitch of the at-bat to strike him out and end the inning.
Both teams got a baserunner in the second on a single by Giancarlo Stanton and a walk by Patrick Bailey, but the game was kept scoreless. In the third, Grisham was able to overturn a frankly horrendous strike three call with ABS and drew a walk. After Judge struck out, Bellinger lined a single up the middle to give Rice another chance, and the young slugger didn’t miss it, smashing a ball 105.5 mph off the right-field wall to open the scoring with a two-run double. It would’ve been a home run at Yankee Stadium… and 23 other parks.
Stanton lined another single shortly after to give Rice a chance to score, but a strong throw from Heliot Ramos gunned him down at the plate. San Francisco, whose scoreless streak was now up to a baffling 20 innings to start the season, finally got on the board with a Jung Hoo Lee double and Matt Chapman RBI single. Warren was struggling to put hitters away for much of his outing, but he was able to impressively strike out Arraez and Devers to get out of that mini-jam, keeping a 2-1 lead.
Mahle concluded his outing in the fourth with a sharp 1-2-3 inning that included a long flyout from Ryan McMahon, while Warren induced a nifty 3-6-1 double play to end the bottom half. Rice has looked a helluva lot more comfortable at first base in the opening series.
Ryan Borucki got the fifth for the Giants and was able to dispatch Wells and Grisham. Joe Davis openly wondered on the broadcast whether rookie skipper Tony Vitello would put Judge on intentionally due to the pair of lefties behind him with the lefty specialist on the bump. Well, despite striking out seven of his first 11 at-bats to start the year, the three-time MVP struck again in his homecoming, blasting his fifth career home run in San Francisco and second in this series to make it 3-1.
Warren, like Max Fried and Cam Schlittler before him, isn’t completely built up, so he faced two more hitters and was pulled after walking Lee with one out. Overall, it was a fine first outing for the sophomore starter. He had real juice in the first, maxing out at 98 and throwing several pitches harder than his season-high from last year, but he lost several ticks as the game went on and struggled to put guys away. Still, it’s not a bad season debut for someone trying to stay in the rotation long term as a pair of All-Stars rehab.
Brent Headrick was the one who answered the call to the bullpen and was able to retire Matt Chapman and Arraez to end the fifth. Matt Gage, who was a Yankee very, very briefly, sat the Yanks down in order 1-2-3 to start the sixth.
Looking to play matchup, Aaron Boone left Headrick out there to face Devers, who roped a leadoff double to right. He made the move to go to Jake Bird, and it started poorly with a Ramos single to put runners on the corners, but Bird struck out Willy Adames, and the infield defense flashed again by somehow doubling up old friend Harrison Bader, 4-6-3, to end the inning.
Keaton Winn sat the bottom of the order down in order in the seventh for the Giants, but their offense remained flummoxed by a combination of Bird and Tim Hill. Austin Wells improved to 3-for-3 on the season in ABS challenges with a pair in the inning, including one to punch out Lee to end the frame.
Erik Miller started the eighth for San Francisco and gave up a single to Grisham and walked Bellinger, eventually being pulled for JT Brubaker, who induced an inning-ending pop-out from Stanton. Hill did what he does best in the bottom half, responding to an infield single by Arraez by getting Devers to hit into another double play. Now that he’s in the National League, this is the first time since 2016 that the longtime Yankee killer hasn’t hit a home run against the Yankees. Huzzah!
Ryan Walker had a 1-2-3 top of the ninth to set the stage for David Bednar. The Renegade walked Ramos to start the inning after ABS overturned a strikeout, and Adames singled to put the tying run on base. The story of this game, however, was clutch Yankees pitching and disastrous Giants situational hitting, as Bader struck out and Bailey hit into a game-ending 4-6-3 double play to lock down the series sweep for the Yankees.
After a rare Sunday offday, the Yanks travel up to Seattle to start a three-game set with the reigning AL West champion Mariners on Monday at 9:40 pm EDT. It’ll be Ryan Weathers’ Yankees debut up against former All-Star Luis Castillo, and for just the second time this season, it’ll be on YES.
