And now we find respite from our troubles. It’s a new season of Major League Baseball, one of the best pain relievers known to humankind. Unless your team is on the receiving end of some bad baseball luck. But we won’t talk of such things, not in this opening paragraph. Let us embrace the joy of possibility inherit in every Opening Day Night.
The San Francisco Giants will host the New York Yankees in San Francisco at Oracle Park for the first Opening Night in MLB history. It’ll be a Netflix-themed
event as the broadcast will only be available on the world’s most popular streaming service. If you don’t have a Netflix subscription or if your internet goes down right before first pitch, you can still listen to the familiar voices of Giants broadcasters on KNBR, at least.
The biggest story of this new season is that the Giants franchise has never gone more than four years without a winning season. This would be the fifth consecutive non-winning season if they can’t manage to get to 82 wins. That’s the pressure new manager Tony Vitello finds himself under before he logs a genuine inning of a major league game. That’s right — the Giants are a winning franchise, and breaking an internal streak of their own that helps define that winning way is a really big story. A new manager making the leap from the college ranks to the big leagues, like some sort of NBA coach, is probably the second-biggest story of this season.
His first task will be juggling a nebulous relief corps that would seemingly have every defined role in an open audition. To some extent, a baseball game is a baseball game, and in-game managing for either an SEC game or an NL West game would prove very similar at many points. But how will Vitello handle the pressure late in the game when it’s Aaron Judge stepping into the box and the Giants are clinging to a 4-3 lead?
Ah, and then there’s the Aaron Judge of it all. The Giants host the New York Yankees for this opening series and outside of the Los Angeles Dodgers, this is an intense first test for a first-time MLB manager as well as a roster hoping to sneak into the Wild Card. This is where Rafael Devers comes in.
During the runup to this Opening Night on Netflix, the advertisements touted Aaron Judge and the New York Yankees versus Rafael Devers and the San Francisco Giants. That’s a big change from recent years and having a figure with national name recognition and as a sort of lineup anchor is a redefinition of the team. With his bat in the middle of the order, the lineup takes shape. This is one of the few times in recent years where the lineup has a lot of expectations on it, with the bare minimum being league average. That’s a big shift from recent years, when it was basically “if it could just be league average, the team will be in good shape.“
The Yankees have a great bit of expectation on them as they always do. They’re expected to win the AL East, as tough as a division as the NL West the Giants find themselves in. Last season, they had the best lineup in the sport (+34.3 fWAR — 1st, 849 runs scored — 1st) and this season they’ll be returning basically the same group of hitters. That helped cover for a decidedly average pitching staff (+16.3 fWAR — 14th, just ahead of the Giants at +15.7 fWAR), which is more or less where the team will find itself to start the season, as their two most expensive rotation pieces — Gerrit Cole and Carlos Rodon) aren’t set to return until around May or June.
As much as Judge is the face of the Yankees and the national media has installed Devers as the face of the Giants, it’s Logan Webb who is the Main Giant, and he’ll take the ball on Opening Night. Now, he’s faced the Yankees in game 1 before, right after Aaron Judge turned down the Giants’ massive contract offer in free agency, and it was memorable for 12 strikeouts but still a loss. He did finally defeat the Yankees last season (career: 1-2, 5.50 ERA in 18 IP), but Aaron Judge has never stopped tormenting our favorite team. In 9 games against the orange and black, he’s hitting .484/.590/1.000 with 5 home runs. So, that’s something to keep in mind.
Also worth keeping in mind: both participated in the World Baseball Classic, and Logan Webb was great for Team USA while Aaron Judge was not. He might be The Kid Who Only Hit Homers against the Giants, but in world competition and, like, the World Series, he’s a non-entity. So, take some solace in that, I suppose. Logan Webb? He’s pretty great all the time. Maybe the Giants can get him into the postseason before he’s gone.
The Giants did not win the Cactus League again, but they did place second. Last year, they stormed out of the gates following their success in the spring. Can they do the same here against a quality opponent? Whatever the outcome, baseball is back, and at least for the first couple of games, that’s good enough.
Series overview
Who: New York Yankees (94-68 in 2025) vs. San Francisco Giants (81-81 in 2025)
Where: Oracle Park | San Francisco, California
When: Wednesday at 5pm PT, Friday at 1:35pm PT, Saturday at 4:15pm PT — that’s right. No Sunday game.
National broadcasts: Wednesday (Netflix — yes, the streaming service; and, it’s exclusive), Saturday (FOX TV)
Projected starters
Wednesday: Max Fried (LHP) vs. Logan Webb (RHP)
Friday: Cam Schlitter (RHP) vs. Robbie Ray (LHP)
Saturday: Will Warren (RHP) vs. Tyler Mahle (RHP)
Players to watch (besides Logan Webb & Aaron Judge)
Yankees
Trent Grisham: The Yankees got him in the Juan Soto trade as a way to balance the finances for the Padres, but he was considered a throw-in. But then, last season, he hit 34 home runs and posted an .811 OPS in 581 plate appearances; so, the Yankees tagged him with the qualifying offer, which he accepted ($22.03 million). Is he a $22 million dollar player? No. Have I forgotten (or forgiven) him for hitting that walk-off home run at Oracle Park during the 2020 season? Also no. He is not a thorn in the team’s side as he was in 2020 & 2021 (29-for-95, 4 HR, 19 RBI, 9 2B, 3 3B), with just just 21 hits (1 HR, 2 2B) in his last 95 at bats against them and 3 walks against 30 strikeouts, but you’ve always got to keep an eye for that dude who is not the lineup’s main dude (Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, Jazz Chisholm, Ben Rice), and he’ll be one of the guys the Giants’ carousel of lefty relievers will have to perform well against.
Camilo Doval: We will see if the Giants’ former closer starts off his first full season with the Yankees on a hot streak. We know how wild he can be, but also how effective his velocity is.
Ben Rice & Paul Goldschmidt: Two players at opposite ends of the career spectrum, but Rice’s 26 home runs and left-handed swing should give Giants pitching some problems while Paul Goldschmidt figures to still be a Paul Goldschmidt in the Giants’ side.
Giants
Luis Arraez: It’ll be a big first test for the Giants’ new second baseman as the Yankees offer some speed on the basepaths and a lot of hard contact. He also has the chance to flare some balls all over the field and delight those Giants fans who never stopped believing in batting average as the sole measure of a hitter’s capabilities.
Patrick Bailey: The Yankees’ speed showed up as 134 stolen bases last season (8th in MLB) and so on top of defending against the running game, he’ll also have to deal with the hitters — even as the dugout will be calling more pitches for him this season. And then there’s the ABS Challenge System, which has the chance to spotlight just how effective of a catcher he is, either by showing umpires that he didn’t dramatically frame something or simply that he understands the strike zone enough to know when a pitch has been missed.
Rafael Devers: He should hit at least 3 home runs in this series. He has 31 home runs in 119 career games against the Yankees and a triple slash of .270/.348/.533 to go with it.
Tony Vitello watch
The Vitello era kicks off with a matchup against the New York Yankees and… Aaron Boone. Now, Boone is considered to be a great clubhouse manager, but the knock on him is that he’s not a good in-game strategist. That sort of criticism has lost its impact here in the 21st century, though, as front offices typically provide the manager with so much information that the guy standing on the top step doesn’t really need to think for himself. He just has to manage the human beings around him.
That’s sort of why Tony Vitello’s not going to be a total flop in the early going. Zack Minasian and the quants will have provided Vitello and his coaching staff with all the scouting reports and decision trees he’ll need to get through 9 innings, just as Brian Cashman has given Boone. Boone is 697-497 in 8 seasons. Given that, I’m sure he has earned the right to go “off script” and has probably developed some good instincts. Enough to outfox or fluster Tony Vitello, baseball rat? I doubt it. In case you forget, Boone had never managed anything anywhere when he got the call to manage the Yankees.
So, although it’s unlikely that either guy will make an obviously embarrassing decision, I’ll be watching to see if there’s anything that stands out and if Aaron Boone can out-manage Tony Vitello or vice versa.
Prediction time
The Giants did win their 3-game series against the Yankees last season. But! They are just 3-6 in the matchup since 2023, so let’s go with our favorite line on this site: Giants avoid the sweep.
