Yankees Win Home Opener, Lose Sanchez and Gain Montgomery

home-opener-yankees-angels

Yesterday at the stadium, the atmosphere was ELECTRIC. With a younger team out there fighting (maybe the weather played a bit of a role) the stadium was packed full of energy early. Pineda was lights out and had everyone on their feet, showing us what he could be if he would just get out of his own way, and the bats were alive. Chase Headley continued his hot start, Judge provided a home run and Matt Holliday stayed hot.

The day would’ve been even better is that crook Martha Stewart would’ve just kept her Twitter fingers in her goddamn pockets.

Martha

MARTHA YOU BITCH!!!!

After dropping 2 heartbreakers in Baltimore, we’ve won 2 straight and have shown signs of life that are encouraging for the rest of the season. The young guys need a bit more production (health) and the pitching has a lot of room for improvement, but some rotation help may be on the way tomorrow.

After yesterday’s game, the Yankees named Jordan Montgomery our 5th starter and called him up to start on Wednesday. This pushes Severino back a day but also gives CC and Tanaka an extra day rest, which that could use. Last season Montgomery was 14-5 with a 2.13 ERA in 25 starts in Double-A and Triple-A. This spring he came out to compete for a job and in 19.2 innings during the spring, he put up a 3.20 ERA.

Montgomery is a hard throwing 6’6″ lefty who has had a short professional career but shows a ton of upside, as laid out by Hubbs here.

On the other hand, we found out that Gary Sanchez is out for a month. On Saturday he strained a biceps while fouling off a pitch in the 5th inning and on Sunday was put on the 10-day DL. The hope was that this would just be a quick injury, but it will be at least 4 weeks without El Gary behind the plate. With this some other guys are going to get a shot to play but Sanchez has no reason to worry about his job. After struggling to start the season, this can give Gary the opportunity to come back stronger, in warmer weather, and get right back to wear he left off in 2016.

We’re below .500 but there are a lot of reasons to be excited this year and I suspect we won’t be below .500 for long.