That Yankees-Brewers game was weird

Troy Ciesco

— 3 min read

The New York Yankees hosted the Milwaukee Brewers for the second game of the 2025 season on Saturday, March 29th.

The game was so weird that I set up a blog just to have a place to write about it.

Setting the stage

The first strange thing was the weather. As a New England native, I'm usually watching Yankee home games in a climate that's roughly the same as in the Bronx, give or take a few degrees.

Except on Saturday it was 78 and sunny at Yankee Stadium, and outside my apartment in Cambridge, MA we had a light drizzle and a high of 36. My hometown of Tolland, CT - from which I've driven to and from Yankee games before - had a high of 48.

The pitching matchup and lineup

These things weren't necessarily weird, but they were new and/or noteworthy. Max Fried made his first start for the Yankees, and Nestor Cortes made his first start for the Brewers - and happened to face his former team. Paul Goldschmidt led off for the first time in his 15-year career.

The first inning

The top of the first passed without incident - no runs, no hits, one walk, and one strikeout to start Fried's Yankee career.

Then things got weird.

Nestor has been incredible over the years at Yankee Stadium, with a sub-3.00 ERA. Paul Goldschmidt either didn't know, or didn't care, or maybe he was real excited about leading off for the first time, because he sent Nestor's first pitch 413 feet over the left center field wall.

Then Cody Bellinger hit the very next pitch 451 feet over the right center field wall. (Paul O'Neill can be forgiven for calling Cody by his father's name on the broadcast since he was the elder Bellinger's teammate for three years).

Then Aaron Jude obliterated the next pitch - Nestor's third pitch of the game after two home runs - 468 feet to left.

Nestor got the next two outs, but then gave up another home run to Austin Wells. Then walked two batters. Then stood there while the trainer came out to see if he was hurt. He wasn't. Brutal.

Finally a strikeout of Trent Grisham ended the inning.

The second inning

That first inning by the Yankees is the kind that tends to set a definitive tone for the game, where the team that's down might get lucky and claw back over nine innings, but typically ends up putting infielder Nicky Lopez on the mound at some point to save pitcher innings.

Milwaukee came right back, though, and pushed across three runs in the top of the second to make it 4-3. The Yankees made two errors in the inning: a throwing error by Anthony Volpe while trying to turn a double play, and a throwing error by Fried on a ground ball from Christian Yelich.

Those two errors were only 40% of the errors the Yankees made in the game.

The Yankees saved some of their hitting for the bottom of the second. It was here that Michael Kay let us know that Jazz Chisholm, Jr. and Volpe are using unique bats this season. The weight is distributed differently so that the "meat" of the bat is down near the label as opposed to up at the top of the barrel.

The idea, as I understand it, is that Volpe and Chisholm tend to make contact there, so the redistribution of weight helps them drive the ball better.

Anyway, Volpe hit a 3-run home run like eight seconds after Kay said that. He hit the ball with the label.

Other stuff

This post is a work in progress as I work my way back through the game to remember all the stuff that stood out to me. This game felt like a regular season game that's going to stick out in my head for a long time - another that comes to mind is the first game for Aaron Judge and Tyler Austin where they hit back-to-back home runs.

Some other things to examine:

  • At first I thought Nestor's most recent outing before this one was when he gave up the walk-off grand slam to Freddie Freeman in Game 1 of the World Series last year, but he through 1 2/3 innings in Game 3 as well
  • The final score was 20-9. I can't believe this is at like 700 words so far and I hadn't even written that yet
  • J.C. Escarra made his MLB debut at age 29
  • Volpe (1 Gold Glove), Fried (3 Gold Golves), and Brice Turang (1 Gold Glove and 1 Platinum Glove) all had an error, as did Chisholm Jr. and Pablo Reyes (who had two errors, though I was kinda iffy on one)
  • Goldschmidt (4 Gold Gloves) also looked a bit out of sorts on a few plays, though wasn't charged with any errors. In general the ball seemed to be taking some odd hops around the infield
  • Yankees hit 9 home runs
  • The box score looks especially wild because of the early season rate stats. After his 7th inning homer, Oswald Peraza is currently slashing 1.000/1.000/5.000