Weird Yankees Moments: March/April 2023

The first month of the 2023 Yankees’ season is now in the books. It was a bit of an annoying one as after a solid first couple series, the Yankees slumped over the final couple weeks. They finished April at 15-14, which was tied for fourth in the AL East.

This isn’t going to be a look back at the Yankees’ struggles or successes from March and April. Instead, let’s look back at the oddest moments that went down over the first month of the season.

March 30th

This year’s Opening Day will remember for a couple reasons for Yankees’ fans. For one, Aaron Judge homered in his first at-bat after re-signing and becoming the Yankees’ captain. Hopefully, we’ll all remember it as the first game of a long and successful career for Anthony Volpe. However as far as on-field performances go, Gerrit Cole’s was the best.

Cole struck out 12 Giants in six innings, setting a record for the most Ks any Yankee earned in an Opening Day start. The fact that he set that record isn’t totally surprising, he’s a very good pitcher. However, who he surpassed to get the record is fairly amusing.

April 2nd

Maybe not that weird or surprising, but Giancarlo Stanton killed a baseball in cold blood.

April 7th-12th

Before falling off a cliff, a fun story in the first couple weeks of the season was the play of Franchy Cordero. In this six-game stretch, five of which Cordero played in, he went out and hit four homers. Two of them came against the Orioles, who had cut him shortly before the season began. For this time, it appeared the Yankees had struck gold with this otherwise random seeming pickup right before the season began. Alas, they did not.

April 12th

The last game in that stretch featured a frustratingly odd moment. In the bottom of the first, Aaron Hicks appeared to make a sliding catch to save a run and allow the Yankees to double up a runner and end the inning. The issue was that on replay, he trapped the ball as opposed to coming up with a clean catch. The good news was that the Guardians didn’t appear to challenge it ... until they did?

When the YES Network came back from commercial, the umpires were discussing something. Soon, a challenge was granted, despite the fact that there’s supposed to be a time limit on challenge requests, and the Guardians themselves pretty quickly exited the field. The play was overturned because, yes, if you watch it, it’s clear the ball wasn’t cleanly caught. A run scored on that play, and Cleveland was able to add another before the inning was over.

Thankfully, all that didn’t end up mattering in the end. The Yankees were able to come away with a win, thanks in part to this also very weird play.

April 13th

The first series the Yankees didn’t outright win came when they hosted the Twins for four games starting on April 13th. They ended up salvaging a split in it, but it started in a very bad fashion.

After a couple very nice starts from Jhony Brito to begin his MLB career, he got blown up in this game in ridiculous fashion. He recorded just two outs as the Twins scored seven runs off Brito in what ended up being a nine-run first inning. One of the outs that he got even led to a run, as it was a sac fly that plated a runner. Yours truly had ordered food for dinner, and it had arrived about five minutes before first pitch. By the time the bottom of the first was over, I had almost finished my meal. Before the game was over, Isiah Kiner-Falefa ended up taking the mound.

The Twins have been brutally owned by the Yankees for many years now, so they were kinda due that.

April 26th

Two weeks after hosting the Twins, the Yankees then hit the road to play in Minnesota. They lost the first two games of that series, dooming them to the first season series loss to the Twins since 2001. However, they did manage to get a victory there before leaving the Twin Cities.

In that victory, the Yankees struck with five runs in the second inning and never really looked back from there. The first run of that inning came thanks to former Yankee Joey Gallo just ... throwing the ball to the wrong fielder.

The less said about a certain event that happened later in this game, the better.

April 29th

Back in 2017, Dustin Fowler made his Yankees and MLB debut in a game in Chicago against the White Sox. In the bottom of the first inning, he injured himself after running into the wall while chasing after a fly ball that went into the stands. That ended up being his only action in a Yankees’ uniform as that injury knocked him out of the rest of the 2017 season, and the Yankees then included him in the Sonny Gray trade later that year.

Almost six years later, a similar situation nearly went down. While it wasn’t his MLB debut, new Yankee Jake Bauers hurt himself while making a fairly impressive catch against the Rangers.

Like Fowler, he had to be removed from his Yankee debut before getting an at-bat, although Bauers didn’t end up needing to be placed on the IL.