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After a months long wait, the 2020 Major League Baseball season will begin in a couple hours. The Yankees will play a pretty major part in that as they are in D.C. to face the reigning World Series champion Washington Nationals in the first regular season game of the year.
As the countdown continues to when the teams take the field, we can now take a look at the lineup the Yankees will be running out here on Opening Day:
- CF Aaron Hicks
- RF Aaron Judge
- SS Gleyber Torres
- DH Giancarlo Stanton
- LF Brett Gardner
- C Gary Sanchez
- 1B Luke Voit
- 3B Gio Urshela
- 2B Tyler Wade
The most notable thing is the absence of DJ LeMahieu, although it’s not shocking considering that he missed a decent chunk of time after testing positive for COVID-19. In his place, Wade will man second base while Hicks gets the nod in the leadoff spot LeMahieu occupied for most of last year.
Funnily enough, despite how he played last season, this is actually the second straight year LeMahieu isn’t in the Opening Day lineup. Last year, Troy Tulowitzki was around and playing shortstop, which pushed Torres to second. A lot can change in a year and a couple months.
Other notable things include Brett Gardner hitting fifth ahead of the like of Sanchez and Voit. Gardner is coming off a very good offensive year in 2019, but it’s still pretty wild to see him in the heart of an order at this stage in his career.
Wade and his career 53 wRC+ are the obvious weak spot in the lineup. However, if he can get on in this game, a combination of his speed and the people hitting behind him could render him dangerous.
One other weird fact is that due to the delayed start to the season, Aaron Hicks will have officially missed zero games after undergoing Tommy John surgery.
The lineup will have a tough task on their hands as Max Scherzer will be on the mound for Washington. A Yankees team has not faced him since June 9, 2015, when they got him for four runs in 6.2 innings. However, it should be noted that other than Gardner, no one from that days lineup is on the team today. (Pour one out for that day’s nine hitter Ramon Flores, who had a three-hit game.)
On the mound for the Yankees will be some guy named Gerrit Cole. Don’t know much about him, but I’m intrigued to find out.
So now that we know the starters for today’s game, what do you think? Let us know in the comments!