Opening Night: Yankees start fast, roll past Giants in San Francisco
Yankees' José Caballero, left, and Jazz Chisholm Jr. embrace after defeating the San Francisco Giants on Opening Night at Oracle Park on Wednesday, March 25, 2026, in San Francisco. Credit: Getty Images/Thearon W. Henderson
SAN FRANCISCO — One of Yankees general manager Brian Cashman’s go-to phrases over the years relates to the daily scrutiny his club is under.
In New York, Cashman says, every day is treated like “162 one-game seasons.”
That being the case, Wednesday night made for a heck of a season.
The Yankees, behind 6 1⁄3 scoreless innings by Max Fried and a five-run eruption in the second inning that saw them send nine to the plate, hammered the Giants, 7-0, in front of a sellout crowd of 40,856 at Oracle Park to officially kick off the 2026 season.
“Obviously, a great way to start things,” Aaron Boone, in his ninth season as manager, said afterward.
“A good night for us. I think we can beat you a lot of different ways.”
Many of those ways over the years have included with the homer. The Yankees, who led all of baseball in runs last season with 849, no doubt will hit their share this season. But they did not go deep Wednesday night in outhitting the Giants 10-3 in capturing a season-opening win for a fifth straight year.
“I think guys were just going up there, doing what the game asked them to do, take their knock,” said Ryan McMahon, who hit a two-run single in the fifth.
“We put a bunch of balls in play, found a couple of holes and ended up putting up a good number.”
Trent Grisham, under fire from Yankees’ fans from the time he accepted the $22.05 million qualifying offer in November, a significant contributing factor to fan-favorites Jasson Dominguez and Spencer Jones not making the club out of spring training, had the other big hit in the five-run second off Giants ace righthander Logan Webb with a two-run triple.
Giancarlo Stanton had two hits and a run batted in and Austin Wells added two hits and a run.
The only Yankee not to reach base at least once was three-time AL MVP Aaron Judge, winner of that award each of the last two years, who went 0-for-5 with four strikeouts against the team he grew up rooting for (Giants legend Barry Bonds, one of Judge’s favorite hitters to watch growing up, was in the ballpark as part of the Netflix broadcast).
“This team, they led the league in runs scored last year and we have a lot of the same guys back,” Fried, who allowed two hits and a walk in his 86-pitch outing, said of the Yankees output without a homer.
“We obviously have the best player in the world [Judge] hitting for us, but we also have a lot of guys being able to support him. It’s a team game.”
Fried, coming off a season in which he went 19-5 with a 2.86 ERA (those 19 wins leading the major leagues), struck out four.
Fried, who had far from his best stuff with his seven-pitch arsenal, pitched out of a first-and-third-one-out jam in the first, then faced no further trouble thereafter.
After hitting Casey Schmitt with one out in the second inning, Fried retired 15 of the final 16 batters he faced. The lone blemish in that stretch was a two-out single in the fourth by Heliot Ramos.
Fried, demonstrating for the umpteenth time the completely irrelevance of spring training numbers (he posted a 4.40 ERA this spring), promptly retired eight straight to end his outing.
“Definitely it was one of those outings where you just got to try to figure out how to get it done when you aren’t the most locked in, especially coming out of the gate walking the guy (Giants leadoff man Luis Arraez) on four pitches and having to grind through it. Definitely was searching.”
Fried’s offense made that process far easier in the top of the second as it went about blowing the Giants straight into nearby McCovey Cove.
Webb, who finished fourth in NL Cy Young voting last season, carved up the Yankees in a 1-2-3, 17-pitch first but allowed six straight to reach with one out in the second. Stanton, who hit the ball hard all spring, singled, Jazz Chisholm Jr. was hit by a pitch and Jose Caballero, whom many Yankees fans prefer to be the shortstop even after the injured Anthony Volpe returns, lasered an RBI double to left to make it 1-0.
McMahon, brilliant with his glove since coming over to the Yankees via trade last year but subpar with the bat, a trend that continued this spring, followed by bouncing a two-run single to center. After Wells, batting ninth, singled, Grisham launched a two-run triple to right-center for a 5-0 lead.
“When the guys go out there and put up five runs in the second,” Fried said, “it just allows you to take a deep breath and get into the game.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
