The last time the Yankees were blanked in a home opener 14,375 fans at the original Yankee Stadium watched the Boston Red Sox in the infancy of their “Impossible Dream” season of 1967 debut a 21-year-old named Billy Rohr, who fell an out shy of a no-hitter.
Those Yankees were the aging remnants of the glory days of the 1950s and 1960s and the team did not get blanked in a home opener until Friday when this version of the Yankees paused their much-needed solid start by not doing much of anything.
In fact the most notable thing was the pregame 4.8 earthquake that was felt by some during batting practice and hardly noticed at all by others. The earthquake puns some could make about Juan Soto were put on hold and the home opener was a dud in the form of a 3-0 loss to the Blue Jays that was decided in the seventh inning and resembled many games through last season’s 82-win slog.
Still the home opener seemed to signal a newish era of the Yankees with Marcus Stroman hyping up fans with his pregame encouragement and then with his six outstanding innings that went for naught when the Yankees got blanked for the second time.
Soto was the main attraction whether it was the slugger opting to use “New York State of Mind” by Jay-Z as his walk-up song or bowing down to the fans in the right field bleachers during their usual roll call.
“Really cool,” Soto said “Really nice. It’s all love from them to me and me to them.”
The Yankees of the past hardly had any hype men to offer natural hype as opposed to the booming music but Soto and Stroman provided personality and hype for fans.
Still it was not enough as Soto saw 17 pitches, struck out twice, went 0-for-4 and is 1-for-16 after going 9-for-17 in last weekend’s electrifying four-game sweep at Houston.
At one point his pregame hype turned to frustration and it was in the eighth inning. Soto took a closed called third strike and promptly flung his bat and helmet to the field in disgust of either taking the pitch or seeing the pitch was called for a strike he thought was not in the strike zone.
“It’s tough,” Soto said. “It’s the frustration that comes out. You want to do some things for this fan base, get your team going, you have the chance to do it and couldn’t get it done. It really gets you mad. At the end of the day, that’s my fault. I shouldn’t do that, but things happen.”
Still despite the disappointment about an offense doing what it did 10 times last times, there was a lot to like from Stroman, who has yet to allow an earned run in his first 12 innings. He is not a high strikeout pitcher with two double-digit strikeout games in his career but got five timely strikeouts and lived up to his billing as a ground ball pitcher by getting seven outs that way.
“The guy shows up and makes pitches when he has to, and got out of some tough jams,” Aaron Judge said. “It’s impressive; it’s been fun to watch him work, his process and how he gets prepared for the games. He did it again for us today; we just weren’t able to get him a couple of runs.”
The Yankees earned their pregame hype by going through a 6-1 road trip that showed some of the late inning mettle they lacked last season. And once the hype stopped, their home opener was a mixed bag but still only represented the eighth game of a season they expect to go well and not feature many outings when Soto, Judge and Giancarlo Stanton are a combined 1-for-10, the offense gets two at-bats with runners in scoring position and no runners reaching third base.
