At long, long, long last, baseball returned on Wednesday. The San Francisco Giants took the field, the fans poured through the gates, and the kayaks flooded the cove. For the first time in 178 days, Giants baseball was back.
But seriously, you couldn’t have waited 179 days? We had to do this today?
Apparently. And so the Giants returned to your screen and Aaron Judge struck out four times for the first time since 2024, and other than that, the evening was a gigantic, awful, no-good mess.
The game was a fiasco from the get-go, and it started before it even started. The Netflix baseball era began with an All-Star display of solipsistic streaming. It seemed the company’s lone goal was to convince you to sign up for a service that you already had to be signed up for to see said streaming, creating a capitalism ouroboros, with baseball nowhere to be found. Somehow, despite the day supposedly being about celebrating the return of America’s pasttime, we were forced to confront three of the people I least want to listen to when watching baseball: Bert Kreischer, Jameis Winston, and Rob Manfred. On top of all that, Netflix had all winter to prepare for this one game, and still ended up with the worst graphics in the history of organized sports.
Finally and mercifully, the game began, only 20 minutes late. And for a few glorious moments, not only was all right with the world, but the Giants were cooking. Logan Webb took the mound for his fifth consecutive Opening Day assignment, but just his second at home. He struck out Trent Grisham. Then he struck out Judge. Then he got Cody Bellinger to fly out to cap a perfect inning.
The good vibes and times would only amplify in the opening moments of the bottom half of the inning. Facing the inevitable Max Fried, Luis Arráez — who walked just 58 times across 1,257 plate appearances the last two years — began the season, and his Giants tenure, with a four-pitch walk. Naturally. After Matt Chapman narrowly legged out a potential double play, the Giants had their first moment that made you consider that the day just might be special (beyond the obvious theatrics).
Rafael Devers, fearsome as he may be, got up in the count 2-0, was handed a challenge sinker by Fried, and swung out of his boots for it. He popped it up, at a decidedly unintimidating 74 mph, high into the San Francisco wind.
But it landed in the glorious dead area where the middle infield can’t quite reach the middle outfield, try as it may. And Chapman, reading the arc of the looper so deftly that I initially thought he had mistaken the situation for having two outs, made it all the way to third on Devers’ bloop. Here, in the bottom of the first, with their ace on the mound and dealing, the Giants had a prime opportunity to strike first, and seize control.
Instead, Willy Adames struck out and Jung Hoo Lee ground out, and we went to the second inning, where the game was lost.
The Yankees, it seemed, had a plan against Webb: attack early. Ben Rice swung at the first pitch of the inning, and while he grounded out, it set the tone. Giancarlo Stanton swung at the second pitch of his at-bat, singling it into center for New York’s first baserunner. Webb got in on the action himself, hitting Jazz Chisholm Jr. with his next pitch. José Caballero showed the most patience of them all, waiting until the third pitch of his at bat to blister a ball down the third-base line for an RBI double.
Old NL West foe Ryan McMahon also waited for the third pitch, dribbling a seeing-eye single through the middle for a two-run single. Austin Wells took the very next pitch into the outfield for a one-bagger. Grisham took the very very next pitch into the outfiield for a three-bagger. Six consecutive batters had reached base, and they’d seen a combined 11 pitches.
It was the type of performance that left you feeling like the Yankees were better prepared than the Giants. The type of performance that made you wonder if New York was picking up on a tell with Webb’s pitches. The type of performance that leads you to overanalyze a game that represents just 0.617% of the schedule.
Webb recovered. He ended that nightmare sequence by striking out Judge again, and then Bellinger. He set down the side in order in the third. He handled the fourth easily, while handing a Judge a hat as he punched him out for a third time.
But in the fifth, the same thing happened. The Yankees, as if remembering what had worked in the second, hit the “replay” button on the strategy. Bellinger singled on the first pitch of the inning. Rice singled on the second pitch of the inning. Stanton singled on the fourth pitch of the inning. And then, because this is what happens when things aren’t going your way, Webb got what he assumed would be a double-play grounder from Chisholm, but Adames’ throw was low and Casey Schmitt couldn’t dig it out, resulting in an error that scored the second run of the inning, and the seventh and final run of the game.
That was six runs more than was necessary for the Yankees. The Giants offense, so potent in February, was nowhere to be found in the first meaningful game of the year, be it against Fried or the trio of relief arms the Yankees employed, which included Camilo Doval. When all was said and done, Devers’ bloop stood as one of just three hits off the Giants’ bats, joining mild-mannered singles by Arráez and Heliot Ramos. Arráez also had his walk, as did Chapman, while Schmitt was hit by a pitch, and those were the only Giants to earn a spot on base, though Adames also found a residence at first thanks to an error.
It was a 7-0 loss that humbled not just the Giants, but all of us who dared pretend like we know things about baseball. The talk all offseason and preseason was about the team’s revamped and exciting offense. The least concerning part about the Giants was Webb. The glaring issue and question mark was the bullpen.
And yet the offense was nonexistent, and Webb had his first five-run inning since 2023. The bullpen, meanwhile, was the only thing that went right for the Giants. Keaton Winn was downright filthy, striking out Judge and Bellinger in a powerful sixth-inning appearance.
JT Brubaker needed just 22 pitches to handle two scoreless innings. Caleb Kilian took on the heart of the order — Judge, Bellinger, and Rice — and retired them in order, on 10 pitches in the ninth.
It’s a funny game like that. Maybe the bullpen will prove to be the star of the team. Or perhaps, as is more likely, we’ll soon be reminded that one game is just that: one game.
Today I went to the store to load up on snacks for the game. The woman checking out in front of me saw my basket and asked if I was hosting a party. I told her that no, I just like to buy ballpark foods for the first day of the baseball season. That seemed to please her greatly.
Thankfully she didn’t ask what team I was rooting for. I’d like to think she’s out there somewhere, envisioning that I had a much more enjoyable evening than I actually did.
