Opening Night

It's the Day of Opening Night before Opening Day. Max Fried takes the ball tonight in San Francisco, the Netflix (?) cameras are locked in, and the 2026 season officially begins. Scroll for a Yankees rotation discussion, robot umps, and the JM x WBC vlog.

Drop a line with your spiciest Opening Day thoughts.

— Team TSN

The Yankee rotation opens the season without Gerrit Cole (elbow), Carlos Rodón (hamstring), and Clarke Schmidt (lat). Over $70 million in 2026 contract value missing on Opening Night. And somehow this feels okay after the Yankees survived 2025 without Gerrit Cole.

The kid from nowhere: Cam Schlittler is locked in at number two. Not a placeholder, not a warm body, but The Guy. After a legendary October performance he just posted a filthy spring: his slider is so gross that it gives him "the ick" when he throws it right.. His 2025 was a steady line up and now he’s the type of Schlitt the Yankees need.

Bronx Fried pitchin’: Max Fried’s first year in the Bronx went pretty well. A career-high and league-leading 19 wins, an All-Star nod, and a Gold Glove as the Yankee staff helped him unlock a sixth gear. Behind Fried and Cam, it’s fireballing Ryan Weathers and a returning Will Warren. The four-man rotation right now is one that would make a lot of teams jealous, even without the big names set to return.

The Gil situation: Luis Gil, the 2024 AL Rookie of the Year, won't be on the Opening Day roster. He's heading to Triple-A, and by all accounts, he was not thrilled about it. But here's the math: the fifth starter isn't needed until April 11, and the Yankees would rather have Gil stretched out and building confidence than burning through his first month sitting in the bullpen. It makes baseball sense even if it stings.

Not just a Yankees story: The injury theme stretches across the league. The Braves will open with their entire projected rotation on the IL — Strider, Schwellenbach, Waldrep, Smith-Shawver, Wentz. Hunter Greene is on the 60-day IL in Cincinnati. The Yankees' situation is manageable precisely because they planned for it. Not every team can say that.

In a spring training ballpark a few weeks ago, an umpire had five consecutive ball-strike calls overturned by the Automated Ball-Strike challenge system. The crowd gave him a standing ovation when he won the sixth challenge.

How it works: ABS doesn't replace umpires (yet). Each team has two challenges, which they keep if they’re correct. After each home plate call the pitcher, batter, or catcher has two seconds to request a challenge. If the ABS data backs them up, they keep the challenge. If they’re wrong, they lose it. And they really do have to request it immediately.

Spring training was chaos: The clips went everywhere as players were aggressively trying out the new system. We’ll soon see how it plays out in games that count. On the one hand, we finally have accountability for bad calls, but on the other we have a new way to slow the game down after spending three years speeding it up with the pitch clock. And after every big pitch we’ll have to wait two beats to see if the call is being challenged. And we’ll have fewer epic Aaron Boone arguments.

Welcome to the machine: Will umpires get more conservative, second-guessing themselves into a smaller, safer strike zone? Will pitchers who live by “expanding the zone” survive without calls they've gotten for years? The pitch clock changed pace. ABS might change strategy.

What to watch this week: Pay attention to how often challenges get used in the first few series. If teams burn through them early, expect managers to start coaching challenge management. And keep an eye on the pitchers who rely on framing; catchers who steal strikes for a living just got a lot less valuable.