One down, 57 to go.
Opening Day went swimmingly for the Yankees on Thursday afternoon. Actually, if Yankee Stadium were a restaurant, you might have called this a soft opening.
Not that the ballpark, the hosts or the crowd weren’t fully ready. The opponent, though, was another story. It will be another story for much of this 2019 season, and how the Yankees act their part might very well determine their fate.
By pounding the lowly Orioles to the tune of a 7-2 score, the Yankees launched their championship run with the sort of victory they should copy/paste against the myriad inferior foes that occupy their schedule. If they want to replicate the methodology used by last year’s Red Sox to capture the American League East, they should record 57 more wins like this one.
“I think last year, a lot of time [against] teams that were below .500, we didn’t do too well,” said Aaron Judge, who opened his final season as a non-millionaire with two singles and two walks. “So that’s been a priority of ours, even in spring training going into now. Just go out there and try to dominate every single pitcher, every single team.”
Added Judge: “Some teams get you. Some teams have your number throughout the year. You’ve just got to make sure that teams we know we should beat, teams that we’re matched up with pretty well, we should try to take care of them.”
If you look at how the Yankees performed last year against clubs that lost 86 or more games — a 44-25 record, for a .638 winning percentage — you might opine that Judge graded his own team too harshly. Except that the Red Sox, against the same group, posted a 53-15 record, an astounding .779 winning percentage.
So the Red Sox outperformed the Yankees by 9 ¹/₂ games in this category, whereas the Yankees (56-37, .602) edged the Sawx (55-39, .585) by a game and a half in contests against teams that didn’t stink. Boston won the division by eight games because it absolutely devoured these terrible clubs; most notably, the Bosox went 16-3 against the industry-worst Orioles and 15-4 versus the Blue Jays, whereas the Yankees put up marks of 12-7 and 13-6, respectively.
This season, going off the FanGraphs and PECOTA projections, the Yankees have 74 games with clubs forecasted to record 86 or more losses. That won’t necessarily turn into reality, of course. For argument’s sake, though, the Yankees would have to go 58-16 in these games to match the 2018 Red Sox’s clinic on taking care of business.
“It doesn’t much matter who we’re playing, whether it’s the Orioles or the Red Sox or anybody else in our division or in the American League, especially,” Brett Gardner said. “Our goal is to go out there and take things slow, take things one day at a time and try and win every single day.”
Yes, this is a cliché, yet the Red Sox’s unrelenting approach earned them a parade last year.
Brandon Hyde, the Orioles’ rookie manager, spoke in an upbeat manner afterward, as well he should have. Just like with the 2012 Astros, which Baltimore’s new general manager, Mike Elias, helped build as a deputy to Houston GM Jeff Luhnow, Hyde and his fleet of young players have miles to go before they can become relevant.
Asked whether it’s daunting for this raw group to face the Yankees and Red Sox (and Rays, maybe) 19 times each, Hyde said: “I look at it as a challenge. … I look at it as, I love the fact that we’re in the AL East, and I love the fact that there are really good clubs in our division and we’ve just got to grow and get better.”
The Yankees had best love, too, that the Orioles are in the AL East, and that the AL is replete with tankers. They loved it in Game 1, and they should love it all the way through Game 162.
