8-2 win over the Miami Marlins<\/a> in New York’s home opener.<\/p>\nBird credited Natalie Girard for recommending he account for possibly congested streets when he called for Uber pickup at his Manhattan hotel.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy girlfriend is really familiar with New York, so she was kind of telling me, `Hey, there might be traffic in the morning, so you should get there early,’\u201d Bird recalled. \u201cAlso, I didn\u2019t really know where to enter the stadium and stuff and I\u2019ve been in that spot before where I kind of got lost, so just it didn\u2019t hurt to get here a little early and kind of familiarize myself with the place.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Hours later, he entered with a 5-2 lead in the seventh inning. Bird retired Otto Lopez on a flyout, threw a called third strike past Owen Caissie and struck out Connor Norby.<\/p>\n
Bird pumped both arms and screamed.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe had a little emotional release after getting that third out,\u201d Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. \u201cHe was, again, really sharp, man, and went right through the middle of their order. Right, left, left was efficient.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bird was dealt by the Rockies for a pair of prospects last July 31, made three relief appearances on the road, the last in Texas ending with Josh Jung’s three-run, walk-off homer, and was sent to Triple-A for the rest of the season.<\/p>\n
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\u201cI know last year it didn\u2019t really work out the way he wanted,\u201d Yankees captain Aaron Judge said, \u201cHe\u2019s a guy that wants to be here. He wants to be great and I think after going through last year he knows the expectations now and he\u2019s ready to go.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bird has allowed one hit over 4 1\/3 scoreless innings in four games this season, striking out five and walking none.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m just trying to stay closed and not fly open,\u201d he said. \u201cI know my slider and my breaking balls have been really good and fastball is a weak point at times, so just trying to build on the breaking balls as a strength and trying to improve the fastball, as well.\u201d<\/p>\n
An economics major at UCLA, Bird was taken by the Rockies on the fifth round of the 2018 amateur draft and made his big league debut in 2022. He has a 4.68 ERA with 221 strikeouts in 236 2\/3 innings.<\/p>\n
\u201cOpening day is amazing,” he said, \u201cexperience it here for the first time was really cool.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP MLB: https:\/\/apnews.com\/mlb<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The early Bird had to circle Yankee Stadium. Jake Bird arrived at 8:15 a.m.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":662056,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[106,5,167,9350,1119,395,58,4,1690,62,1753,9677,1567,84439],"class_list":{"0":"post-662055","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-aaron-judge","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-colorado","11":"tag-connor-norby","12":"tag-jake-bird","13":"tag-josh-jung","14":"tag-miami-marlins","15":"tag-mlb","16":"tag-new-york","17":"tag-new-york-yankees","18":"tag-otto-lopez","19":"tag-owen-caissie","20":"tag-texas","21":"tag-the-early-bird"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116344254896413998","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662055","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=662055"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/662055\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/662056"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=662055"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=662055"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=662055"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}