Rejoice! Baseball is finally on the horizon. Every opening day is special, but I’m not sure the Yankees could have gotten off to a better start to the 2020 season late and shortened than a series in Washington DC against defending champion Nationals. The Nats fought far and wide to get an unlikely World Series crown last season, going 5-0 in potential elimination games in the playoffs and surviving the Houston Astros in a memorable Game 7.
However, citizens made some changes to 2020. They renewed the signature of the post-season heroes Howie Kendrick and Stephen Strasburg and added Starlin Castro, Will Harris, Eric Thames and Asdrubal Cabrera to the mix, but they lost the All-Star Anthony Rendon, as well as Brian Dozier and Matt Adams. They also have some key players sitting in the light of the coronavirus, including Ryan Zimmerman, Joe Ross and Wellington Castillo. However, their initial rotation and the young core group of hitter are mostly intact.
Thursday: Gerrit Cole vs. Max Scherzer
This is the moment we’ve all been waiting for. The Yankees wrote Gerrit Cole in 2008, but did not sign. So the team sat on his hands as he was swapped from Pittsburgh to Houston after 2017. Now, 12 years after the start of Cole’s chase, he will make his Yankees debut Thursday night. Performance stats don’t matter much in the grand scheme of things, but Cole had a good spring and was excellent in the summer camp, only raising expectations for his debut. The moment of the Yankee’s most famous debut after Alex Rodriguez or Roger Clemens has finally arrived.
Before Cole gets on the mound, Scherzer will launch the first launches of the 2020 season and will do so as the ace of a reigning World Series champion. The last feather in Scherzer’s hat sent pain to an ERA 2.40 in six post-season appearances. The Nats has won every game he has launched in the playoffs, including the World Series Game 7. Although his 36th birthday is only five days away, Scherzer is still at the top of his game and is a foolproof Hall of Famer. He is 4-3 in seven regular season starts against the Yankees, but he also has two post-season wins over New York to his credit.
Saturday: James Paxton vs. Stephen Strasburg
Paxton will begin the second game for the Yankees, and is entering a crucial year at the age of 31. He made 15-6 with a 3.82 ERA and 1.28 WHIP for the Yankees, which looks good, but there were a few hiccups along the way, particularly at the start of the games. However, Paxton has some of the best things on the team. During his best run of 12 starts last year, he went 11-1 with an ERA 3.32 and a batting average of .99 against. With 12 starting in front of him before hitting the free agency for the first time, Paxton will have to overcome his initial fights if he wants the big payday he is so close to getting.
Paxton will be opposed by Stephen Strasburg, who would be the first in the standings in almost all the other teams. Strasburg, who is already 32 (!), Is about to begin an excellent year where he led the league in innings with 209 and scored 251 strikeouts. He followed him through an incendiary post-season and earned a seven-year contract extension, $ 245 million in this offseason. Strasbourg has somehow never faced the Yankees before, which should make Saturday night a compelling and compelling show.
Sunday: TBD vs. Patrick Corbin
With Masahiro Tanaka still working on an injury, the Yankees will switch to a bullpen game in Game 3 of the series. At first it seems bizarre with JA Happ and Jordan Montgomery both available, but launching a bullpen game on Sunday is essentially a placeholder for what would have been Tanaka’s place. He will keep the other beginners on a normal rest and potentially will leave Friday, July 31st as a possible Tanaka debut. As for Sunday’s game, Aaron Boone mentioned Michael King, Jonathan Loaisiga and Chad Green as a chance to “open” the game, and it’s a strong bet that you’ll see at least two of those weapons in the game.
Technically, citizens haven’t even listed a Sunday appetizer, but you can bet the house is Corbin. Corbin launched an exhibition game on Tuesday, which would have lined him up on Sunday. It is clearly the third undisputed appetizer of the Nats after launching an ERA 3.25, 1.18 WHIP, 10.6 K / 9 and ERA + 141 out of 202 innings in the first year of a six-year contract, $ 140 million. He only went 2-3 with a 5.79 ERA in eight post-season appearances (three starts), but still earned his first World Series ring. Corbin has faced the Yankees only once before, returning to his 2013 breakout season, throwing seven innings in a run for the Diamondbacks.
