A smash and a saving in the sun: it is not a bad opening act for the Yankees

NEW YORK – Devin Williams had once launched the Yankee Stadium, a couple of years ago with the Milwaukee Brewers. He hit judge Aaron to end the ninth inning. Williams returned to the mound in the Bronx on the opening day on Thursday and hit Christian Yelich, the best batter of his old team, to win the game.

It is the same job now, only a different shade of gessati, right?

“It’s the same game in my mind,” Williams said in the Club House after the Yankees 4-2 victory. “Obviously there are a little different expectations, more eyes on you here. But none of this is going through me when I’m on the mound.”

So the cameras closed and Williams took a look at the crowd of journalists, a great flexion of the city for the big day.

“It was a little different,” he allowed. “Guys you have enough for two teams here.”

Three minutes with the New York media were nothing compared to three outs against his old team. It took 36 shots, more than Williams has ever launched in a rescue and the maximum in his last 100 appearances, including the postseason.

But Williams did his job. He loaded the bases without outs but finished the day in a line of handshake. His new teammates have assigned him the wrestling belt as the hero of the day. A game, a rescue – the first ever from a bearded Yankee, perhaps? – And now they all build from here.

“This is a week of excessive reaction,” said manager Aaron Boone before the joke. “All the excitement that enters the opening day, now is the week of excessive reaction. We start really well and we will win the World Series; we go to a difficult start this week and it is” well … “you want to get rid of that noise.”

Really, Boone said, you want to take a look at all the first as quickly as possible. So you can settle for a routine, the constant and work rhythms of the long grinding. Enough with noisy expectations and heated plots. Play ball.

“Crazy emotions today,” said midfielder Cody Bellinger, son of the years of the dynasty, now an official Yankee itself. “Many butterflies, but in the end, you have to embrace them.”

Huging a swarm of butterflies makes a curious and tickling visual. But the Yankees held enough under control to take over the apri from the jump. With their last swing last season, the Yankees lost the World Series. With their first swing this season, they hit a race at home. They never lost the command.

Austin Wells has become the first catcher ever to hit a Homer advantage on the opening day, which is a bit like being the first school bus to win the Daytona 500. There are not many catcher who have the possibility.

Boone chose Wells for the lead point despite a career .312 percentage according to the average of the MLB last season. But Wells has power, patience and potential and made his manager seem on the first day.

“I mean, I would ask for it again. Why doesn’t it make sense?” Boone said. “In addition to him, a catcher and is not fast, even if he actually runs well enough for a receiver. … I think he will check the strike area and will also skip on the base, and he is very soon in his career. I think when we look, he will be a boy on the basis that strikes a little power.”

The last guy based on power, Juan Soto, helped bring the Yankees to the Pennant last October. Now it is a meeting of $ 765 million and the Yankees have a new n. 22 who makes the minimum salary: the designated beef Ben Rice, who has gone from n. 93 less dignified.

What did Rice do on Thursday? He walked to lead the seventh inning, unleashing a demonstration of two shots that gave Yankees the pillow to resist Williams’ ninth adventurous ninth. What did Soto do on Thursday? He struck to put an end to the opening of Mets in Houston.

The week of excessive reaction is really here.

The perspective, of course, is the antidote to the excessive reaction. And the perspective suggests that it is ok to be optimistic on the 2025 Yankees, even without soto, even with three quarters of their rotation of the World Series with injuries.

Carlos Rodon is still in a vertical position, at least, and seemed acute, hitting seven in five and a third inning. Three rescuers – Mark Leiter Jr., Luke Weaver and Williams – worked for an inning each, each with two Strikeouts. Anthony Volpe is back. The judge and Bellinger also led the races.

Saturday, the Yankees will introduce Lefty Max Fried, their $ 218 million appetizer and the only launcher of the roster who won a World Series. He beat Astros in the 2021 clincher, raising a team of Atlanta Braves who had lost two main beats – Ronald Acuña Jr. and Marcell Ozuna – during the season and a first appetizer, Charlie Morton, during the World Series.

The Braves have mistaken for some batteries in the summer, put together the launch in autumn and have won a title, which has beenvoled them since then despite the best and healthier. You never know.

“Baseball is the last team game and anyone can win on a given day,” said Fried. “It’s about making the right games, the ball that bounces in the right way and simply not surrender. The baseball is beautiful in that way.”

It is never more beautiful than the opening day is, under the sun, with an entire season of possibilities that extends.

(Top photo of Devin Williams: Mike Stobe/Getty Images)