It\u2019s hard to demand a better start to the Yankees\u2019 2026 campaign than this 5-1 season-opening West Coast road trip. It\u2019s tempting to be greedy and wish that they hadn\u2019t been walked off in Seattle on Monday, but they lost a tough game in an opposing ballpark to a team that fell a win shy of the World Series in 2025 on a walk-off hit by the AL MVP runner-up. It happens. No one\u2019s undefeated, anyway, and only the Brewers and Marlins have matched the Yanks\u2019 5-1 start; note that both of them got to play the White Sox.<\/p>\n
The Yankees will face those Fish on Friday in the Bronx for the Yankee Stadium home opener. Until then, we wait. In the meantime, what do you think was the best moment from this strong start? There\u2019s no shortage of contenders, as it\u2019s been a well-rounded attack. Is it Max Fried\u2019s Opening Night gem by the Bay? David Bednar\u2019s great escape last night in Seattle to secure the series win? Cam Schlittler\u2019s dazzling work? Aaron Judge sparking the offense with homers in the last two San Francisco games? Ben Rice blistering doubles?<\/p>\n
Because I am nothing if not a Giancarlo Stanton enthusiast, I will lean toward him going 414 feet at Oracle Park on Friday shortly after Judge\u2019s tank. Stanton\u2019s been scorching hot with multi-hit games in each of his first five contests (before resting yesterday) and his approach hasn\u2019t exclusively been long-ball reliant \u2026 but boy those dingers are still fun. Great developments from 36-year-old Big G.<\/p>\n
Today on the site, Peter breaks down his Sequence of the Week, Madison runs through the Rivalry Roundup, and Nick celebrates the birthday of a great one-year Yankee in righty Jon Lieber. Later, Michael previews Double-A Somerset\u2019s season, Andr\u00e9s examines a few small tweaks that have helped Jake Bird get off to a much better (early) start in pinstripes than he did after coming over from the Rockies in 2025, and Sam chips in some thoughts of his own<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to demand a better start to the Yankees\u2019 2026 campaign than this 5-1 season-opening West Coast…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658512,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2376],"tags":[5,4,1690,62,2548,2547,7660,3997,142],"class_list":{"0":"post-658511","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york-yankees","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-mlb","10":"tag-new-york","11":"tag-new-york-yankees","12":"tag-newyork","13":"tag-newyorkyankees","14":"tag-pinstripe-alley-discussions","15":"tag-today-on-pinstripe-alley","16":"tag-yankees"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116334602235861454","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658511","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=658511"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658511\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658512"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658511"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658511"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658511"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}