Opening Day has come and gone for the Yankees, ending on a high note despite a little bit of a scare in the ninth. One of the nice things about being the first game of the year is that I can now watch a few other games today without any nerves or stress, because my team took care of business. Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe led the charge with funky solo home runs, and the Yankees ended up beating the Brewers 4-2 on Thursday. Facing his old team, closer Devin Williams endured a nervy ninth to nail down his first save in pinstripes.

We got started in the best possible way — or at least, once MLB.tv figured out its streaming issue. Austin Wells was the first catcher in Yankee history to lead off a game, and boy did he prove Aaron Boone right for pursuing that opportunity in spring training:

Carlos Rodón looked pretty good in his Opening Day outing, going 5.1 innings with seven strikeouts against two walks. In particular the command on his four-seam was strong, well located above the swing plane of most hitters:

One of those fastballs was the one that Vinny Capra slammed into the left-field seats for the first long ball of his career, but the rest of this is good stuff. We’ve seen two years with various states of non-competitive pitches, to get this out of Rodón in his first taste of real baseball this year was a really good sign.

Carlos did begin to stumble in the sixth inning, issuing two walks in his first three batters faced in the frame. Tim Hill was up in the bullpen, and Boone didn’t want to take chances in a one-run game. As is his wont, Hill got three groundballs, one a wormkiller in front of home plate that actually ended up loading the bases, but was able to get out of the inning and keep Rodón in line for the win.

From a lineup perspective, this was really the best we could hope for. The kids need to take steps forward, and Wells of course got the game going, while Anthony Volpe also popped one out to the short porch:

Both Volpe and Wells’ home runs were Yankee Stadium specials, fly balls that would not have left the park in any of the other 29 venues across the game. Good thing the team plays where it does, then.

So, you have the youngsters providing some punch, and Ben Rice added in with a double and two walks. That plus Oswaldo Cabrera’s single set up Aaron Judge for what technically was an RBI double to push across an insurance run:

The Yankees added another run on Cody Bellinger’s sac fly. He and Judge will produce a lot of offense; the whole goal of the year is to get two or three other guys on any given day to chip in too. That happened today, and now will just need to happen 90 or so more times and this is a very real playoff team.

The big names in the bullpen are going to be suffocating. After Rodón left the game, Hill, Mark Leiter Jr., and Luke Weaver allowed just two baserunners, one on that ridiculous infield hit that left the bat at 29 mph. Devin Williams, who nominally should be the best pitcher in the relief corps, was not so successful.

The new closer loaded the bases with nobody out to start his first frame as a Yankee. A sac fly allowed the Brewers to plate a run, and while he did get Milwaukee standouts Jackson Chourio and Christian Yelich to lock up the game (Chourio took the collar with an ugly 0-for-5 on five punchies), it was a 36-pitch slog that drained a few points of everyone’s blood pressure to do so. More troubling was the fact that Williams’ vaunted changeup engineered just two whiffs, a pitch that regularly runs a 45 percent plus whiff rate.

The ending could have been cleaner, but all wins count the same. The play for 162-0 is still alive, and Austin Wells may be carving himself out a role as one of the very best catchers in baseball. The Yankees enjoy the day off tomorrow before sending free agent signee Max Fried to the hill Saturday, against old friend Nestor Cortes. First pitch from Fried comes at 1:05pm ET.

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