{"id":564762,"date":"2026-03-26T03:21:08","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T03:21:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/564762\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T03:21:08","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T03:21:08","slug":"max-frieds-gem-lifts-yankees-despite-judges-hitless-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/564762\/","title":{"rendered":"Max Fried’s gem lifts Yankees despite Judge’s hitless opener"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO — Aaron Judge<\/a> went hitless on opening day for the first time and struck out four times for the first time since September 2024, but the New York Yankees<\/a> still produced plenty of offense and beat San Francisco 7-0 Wednesday night in the debut of Giants manager Tony Vitello as the major league season began.<\/p>\n

Jos\u00e9 Caballero drove in the go-ahead run with an RBI single in a five-run second and also lost the first challenge taken to Major League Baseball’s so-called robot umpire, unsuccessfully appealing a strike by Logan Webb<\/a> in the fourth.<\/p>\n

Max Fried<\/a> (1-0) allowed two hits in 6 innings to became just the fifth Yankees pitcher since 1969 with at least 6 shutout innings on opening day, joining Catfish Hunter (1977), Ron Guidry (1980), Rick Rhoden (1988) and David Cone (1996). New York won an opener with a shutout on the road for the first time since 1967.<\/p>\n

Webb (0-1) started the fourth inning with a 90.7 mph sinker on the upper, inner corner that was called a strike by Bill Miller, a major league umpire since 1997. Caballero tapped his helmet, and the 12 Hawk-Eye cameras of the Automated Ball-Strike System upheld Miller’s decision in a graphic shown on the Oracle Park scoreboard.<\/p>\n

Caballero singled in the second and Ryan McMahon<\/a> followed with a two-run single before Austin Wells<\/a>‘ single prompted a mound visit for Webb. Trent Grisham<\/a> hit a two-run triple and was checked by medical staff after a hard slide into third.<\/p>\n

Judge was booed before the game and during each at-bat as he began his 11th big league season. The California native had been pursued by the Giants during free agency in 2022 but he ultimately chose the Yankees’ $360 million, nine-year contract offer.<\/p>\n

Webb, a 15-game winner last season making his fifth start on opening day, was tagged for six earned runs – seven in all – and nine hits over five innings.<\/p>\n

The 47-year-old Vitello made the big jump from coaching the University of Tennessee.<\/p>\n

The teams resume the series Friday afternoon, with RHP Cam Schlittler<\/a> starting for New York opposite lefty Robbie Ray<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Copyright \u00a9 2026 ESPN Internet Ventures. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO — Aaron Judge went hitless on opening day for the first time and struck out four…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":564763,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[278036,64,63,794,102812,89245,591,2704,5157,85],"class_list":["post-564762","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-278036","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-espn","tag-fried-max","tag-judge-aaron","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-san-francisco-giants","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564762","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=564762"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/564762\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/564763"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=564762"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=564762"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=564762"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}