Yankees.com: ‘A little weird,’ but Yankees win opener as visitors to spring home

From Bryan Hoch:

The Yankees found it “definitely a little bit odd” to occupy the visitors’ side of their spring facility on Thursday evening, as manager Aaron Boone put it, describing his team’s first experiences underneath the third-base grandstands of George M. Steinbrenner Field.

Four weeks after they handed over the keys to the hurricane-displaced Rays, the Yankees were back on familiar turf, albeit without access to posh renovations that have garnered universal praise from players and coaches. Powered by Ben Rice’s first career four-hit game, the Bombers bested Tampa Bay, 6-3, for their fourth consecutive victory.

You have to give Boone a lot of credit in this one. The Yankees are in the middle of a bunch of games in a row, so normally you would expect him to try to avoid using the bullpen so early in the game, but he saw that despite not necessarily BREAKING, Will Warren definitely didn’t have it today, throwing a disgusting 53 pitches through an inning and two thirds, so Boone decided not to let Warren try to get out of trouble in the second when he walked Ben fucking Rortvedt to load the bases with one out, gave up a sac fly to tie the game, and then walked Kameron Misner to RE-load the bases, and so Boone went to the bullpen, and Yarbrough saved Warren out of that bases loaded jam. Yarbrough then gave up a two-run home run himself during his two and 2/3 innings, which makes sense, since he’s not THAT good of a pitcher, either, but he’s not TERRIBLE, so he was able to eat some non-awful innings, and then the real relievers were all excellent, with Tim Hill, Ian Hamilton and Devin Williams dominating (Hill gave up an infield hit, and Hamilton was the only one who gave up a legit single, otherwise, they retired everyone they faced, with Hill bailing himself out of a bases loaded jam he got into with one outs after inheriting two runners from Yarbrough. He gave up an infield single to load the bases, but then got a huge K, and then a grounder to end the threat. It’s ABSURD how good of a reliever Hill has been as a Yankee. When we talk about the Blake Magic, it’s about taking piles of shit, and occasionally turning a few of them into diamonds. Most coaches can’t do even THAT, so Blake failing with guys like Dennis Santana and Caleb Ferguson doesn’t really bother me when he has succeeded immensely with Luke Weaver, Tim Hill, Clay Holmes, and to a much lesser extent, Ian Hamilton. And I think you even see it with Cash’s approach. He signs guys, sees what Blake can do, and if they don’t respond, Cash drops them and gets the NEXT live arm available).

Warren also got in trouble in the first, but Aaron Judge showed off the fact that before he was a mediocre-to-bad center fielder, he was a GREAT right fielder, and Judge nailed the speedy Misner trying to go first to third on a single. It was an amazing throw.

Ben Rice had a huge day, and he has become such a big part of this lineup. It’s this funny sort of deal like last year’s Yankees, where Gleyber, Soto, and Judge (and then Stanton in the playoffs, which obviously was a game-changer in the postseason) did everything, and then the rest of the lineup sucked. Here, it’s Goldschmidt, Rice, and Judge, but, well, three is better than just one!

It sure would be nice to see if Rice could catch a little.

Jazz Chisholm got called on a bullshit makeup strike (the ump missed a strike that should have been called, so then rung Jazz up on a strike that shouldn’t have been called), and Jazz not only got ejected arguing, but he complained about it on nuTwitter, so he might very well get suspended a game (probably he’ll just lose some money).

Anyhow, great win.

The featured image is Judge looking badass after he nailed the runner at third with his throw.

Rodon in Game 2! Oh boy! Well, winning streaks are not meant to go forever…