Yankees Drop Season Opener To Give The Rest Of MLB A False Sense Of Security

There is no real good way to sugar coat this, The Rays just played a better game today. Tanaka didn’t look like an ace, giving us the shortest opening day start by a Yankee pitcher since 1983. His splitter was up in the zone. His slider was left over the middle of the plate. Those things combined to give up 7 earned runs, which is a career high. On top of that, the heart of our lineup went 0-16 and left a ton of guys on base. Every time it looked like we had something going offensively, we fell flat on our faces and looked lost.

Luckily, it’s a long season and these guys can just forget this game and move on with the season. Tanaka will bounce back from this bad start and our 2-5 hitters will get another 595 at bats. These guys are professionals that know better than to worry about today for longer than just this evening because they know that damage they can do and what they’ve shown all Spring Training.

Today wasn’t all bad because Castro and Headley each had 3 hits. Castro needs to be a big spark at the bottom of the lineup and Headley simply can’t have a season like 2016. It took over a month to get an extra base hit for Chase, and while this was only one game, getting some confidence going early is nice after a subpar Spring Training. The bullpen also gave us 5.1 inning without a run and with the way our rotation could hang us out to dry, a strong bullpen in games that our starters can’t go long will be important.

Lets all just take tomorrow off from baseball and come back Tuesday with clear heads.