Friday night at Yankee Stadium offered as emotional an environment for a first-half regular-season game as humanly possible. A city that was already fired up for the biggest Knicks game in a quarter century was also coinciding with the beginning of the most anticipated Subway Series in regular season history.<\/p>\n
Juan Soto returned to Yankee Stadium to a chorus of boos and went hitless, flying out to end the game as the Yankees jumped Tylor Megill early and held on late, winning by a score of 6-2.<\/p>\n
The big storyline was, of course, Soto\u2019s return. He was booed as he came up for his first at-bat and drew a five-pitch walk on some pretty uncompetitive pitches. Carlos Rod\u00f3n seemed unfocused to start this one, as he basically let Soto walk to second base for just his 61st career stolen base despite essentially being picked off. Thanks to a nice play from Oswald Peraza, Rod\u00f3n escaped without giving up a run.<\/p>\n
Soto wasn\u2019t greeted by overwhelming hostility when he ran out his old post in right; rather, the entire right-field bleachers turned their backs to him:<\/p>\n
Megill came out a bit shaky like Rod\u00f3n before settling in \u2014 for the first at least. After walking Trent Grisham, he struck out Aaron Judge, allowed a single to Cody Bellinger, and got out of the inning with a dotted strikeout of Jasson Dom\u00ednguez.<\/p>\n
The two pitchers traded zeroes, with Rod\u00f3n retiring eight straight after the Soto walk. In the third, the floodgates opened. Jorbit Vivas singled, Judge walked, and Bellinger beat out an infield single to load the bases for Paul Goldschmidt, who broke his bat on a pitch down-and-in while sending it up the middle. Francisco Lindor nearly made an incredible play, only for him to throw it wide of Pete Alonso, allowing two runs to score, opening the scoring.<\/p>\n
Dom\u00ednguez drew a walk to load the bases for Anthony Volpe, who lofted a 3-1 sinker into right field, testing his former teammate\u2019s arm. Soto threw a two-hopper to home plate, which wasn\u2019t good enough to get Bellinger for a sacrifice fly. An RBI walk to Oswald Peraza would make it 4-0 and force Megill out of the game early, with Max Kranick finishing the inning.<\/p>\n
Rod\u00f3n got into a jam in the fourth, but escaped with only allowing one run on a Brandon Nimmo RBI single, stranding the bases loaded afterwards to keep it at 4-1.<\/p>\n
With one out in the bottom half of the fourth, Judge roped a single and Bellinger lined a double to immediately put more pressure on the Mets. The Yanks eventually scored both on an RBI single from Goldschmidt and a grounder to second that Dom\u00ednguez beat out to avoid a double play, making it 6-1.<\/p>\n
Despite an overall good line, the Mets fought tooth and nail with Rod\u00f3n for five innings. An outstanding over-the-shoulder catch by Goldy got one of his final three outs in the fifth, but Rod\u00f3n finished it himself with two on and two out, getting his fifth strikeout on a slider to Alonso. He finished with four walks\u2014three to Soto\u2014but five overall productive innings against a very good offense, lowering his season ERA to 3.17.<\/p>\n
Jonathan Lo\u00e1isiga came on for his season debut in the sixth. In his first MLB appearance in 13 months, he gave up a one-out double to Brandon Nimmo, but was able to get the next two outs to keep the lead at five. The Yankees offense went dormant against Jose Butt\u00f3, but their bullpen continued to hold the line.<\/p>\n
The Mets got another extra-base hit off of Mark Leiter Jr. when Tyrone Taylor doubled with one out. However, Leiter fanned Lindor and got a groundball out of Soto to end the inning, his first batted ball after three walks.<\/p>\n
Devin Williams came on for the eighth inning and went right to work, mowing down the heart of the Mets\u2019 order on 14 pitches with a trio of strikeouts \u2014 including a K of his old Wild Card foe Alonso.<\/p>\n
Dedniel N\u00fa\u00f1ez came in and got two quick outs for the Mets, but almost let the Yankees get some insurance in the bottom of the eighth, as Grisham walked and Judge notched yet another multi-hit game. Bellinger ripped a ball 102 mph to right field, but couldn\u2019t get it to drop as the game went to the ninth.<\/p>\n
Yerry De los Santos came on for the Yanks in a 6-1 game in the ninth and wouldn\u2019t make it easy. Starling Marte struck out and Francisco Alvarez fell behind 0-2, but De los Santos\u2019 command escaped him, walking Alvarez. While he bounced back to strike out Brett Baty, he also walked a pinch-hitting Jeff McNeil to flip the lineup and bring Lindor up with two out.<\/p>\n
Boone clearly did not want to use Luke Weaver after he was used a bunch in Seattle, but his hand was forced after Lindor poked a changeup way off the plate for an RBI double down the left-field line with two strikes. The score was 6-2, all but forcing a pitching change with Soto up.<\/p>\n
In the most theatrical ending possible, Weaver induced a game-ending fly out of his 2024 teammate, wrapping up the series-opening win. As a bonus, the Knicks absolutely eviscerated the Celtics a few miles south to advance to the Eastern Conference Finals!<\/p>\n
The Yankees will go for the series win tomorrow, as Clarke Schmidt faces off against Griffin Canning tomorrow at 1:05 EDT. Unlike Sunday, tomorrow will be on YES.<\/p>\n
Box Score<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Paul Goldschmidt drove in a pair of runs, Aaron Judge jumped his average to .414, and Juan Soto went hitless.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":55719,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-55718","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"yoast_head":"\n