James Peacock

If that first game is going to be a harbinger of how this season plays out, it’s going to be one wild ride. In as fantastic of an opening day game as you’re ever going to see, the Yankees came back from four runs down to defeat the Astros 5-4.

Nestor Cortes didn’t have his sharpest stuff. The Houston bats were all over him and they jumped out to an early lead. The Yankees could at first hardly end an inning without grounding into a double play (including twice with the bases loaded). It was like watching an infuriating amalgamation of the same movies we’ve seen time and time again with this team.

Yet the Bombers persevered. They showed a remarkable amount of guts, especially in an opening day game. Nestor eventually hunkered down and the bullpen did what they do, allowing zero earned runs. The offense was unwavering in their collective approach at the plate, seeing pitches (171 faced against six pitchers over the course of the nine inning game) and getting on base.

While it certainly helped that Framber Valdez’s stuff was seemed to be so unbelievably filthy that he just couldn’t reign it in, the Yankees still scored two of their five runs off a walk and a HBP, and seemingly always had multiple guys on base. When the balls put into play finally digressed from routine double plays, glimpses of what could be came into focus. In all, every position player reached base at least once.

It also didn’t hurt to receive immediate contributions from the two players that were traded for in the offseason to help bolster the lineup.

Juan Soto ripped an RBI single to right field to put the Yanks on the board in the fifth inning, and Alex Verdugo drove home the go-ahead run via a sacrifice fly in the seventh. Timely hitting in a non-home run form? Sign me up for all for all of that. Perhaps slightly more surprising was that both made spectacular defensive plays late in the game, coincidentally both off of balls hit by Astros’ slugger Kyle Tucker. Verdugo travelled a long distance to rob Tucker of a double in the left-center gap in the bottom of the seventh inning, while Soto gunned down Mauricio Dubon at the plate off a Tucker single in the bottom of the ninth; both plays preserved a precarious one run lead.

Other notable standouts were Oswaldo Cabrera and Anthony Volpe. Cabrera’s game-tying home run in the sixth was not only the first long ball of the Yankees’ season, but the first moment of pure jubilation for the club. Volpe on the other hand quickly revealed the changes made to his hitting philosophy in the offseason, to the tune of a line-drive single and three walks.

All in all there was much to take away from the first game of the season. Do the Yankees clearly have things to work on? As noted above, of course they do. Every team will and does. Nonetheless, should the players and the fans be excited about what this season may bring? Without a doubt.