Many in baseball knew the Yankees pitching staff was good, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who would have predicted the historic start to the 2026 season the Bronx Bombers are putting up.
Tuesday’s 5-0 win over the Mariners capped off a five-game stretch where Yankees pitching was the most dominant in baseball. And it even made history.
According to Katie Sharp, across the first five games of the season, Yankees pitching has allowed just three earned runs. That’s tied for the fewest in MLB history since 1900, tied with the 1943 Cardinals.
Digging a little deeper, Yankees starters have allowed just one run across those first five games, and the team as a whole has already thrown three shutouts. When asked if he anticipated his staff pitching this well, manager Aaron Boone admitted he didn’t.
“We definitely like our pitching. I don’t know if you draw up this many shutouts and all that early on, I don’t care how good your pitching is. It doesn’t usually work that seamlessly,” he said. “It’s a great start for those guys in there; they’re pitching with a lot of confidence. They’re executing. Austin [Wells] and JC [Escarra] are doing a great job back there with them. And then playing well behind them with our defense, and add it all up, and there’s been a lot of zeros.”
“We have a lot of really talented guys that are really motivated, and we’ve been waiting for this opportunity to have the season start and go and compete,” Max Fried said of the pitching staff after Tuesday’s win. “We want to go in, and we’re leaving everything out there, so we got a lot of. Like I said, really good arms, and we’re throwing the ball really well right now. So we’re just trying to keep it rolling.”
Fried is a big part of the Yankees’ early pitching success. After grinding through 6.1 scoreless innings on Opening Day in San Francisco, the southpaw looked more like his dominant self from a season ago, tossing seven scoreless against the high-powered Mariners lineup.
The 32-year-old said his success on Tuesday was due to being able to throw his various pitches for strikes and working well with Escarra to keep changing speeds.
“There were times where I was just fighting to throw strikes [in my last start],” Fried explained. “I felt like I was actually able to locate today, which made things a lot easier. But you got to go out there and really execute against a team like that. That’s a really good club up there.”
“He was terrific tonight,” Boone said. “He was on point from the start, just in total control of the game. Had everything kind of going for him, different ways to get you out. I thought he changed speeds really, really well, had good life to his fastball just back and forth. Used all his secondary. Until a couple guys got on there in that final inning in the seventh there, felt like he was cruising.”
Fried is now 2-0 and has pitched at least six scoreless innings in both his outings to start the season, which has earned the southpaw a spot in Yankees history. He’s now tied with five others with two such starts. The record holder is actually three by Ray Caldwell in 1914. Fried will get his chance to match that franchise record next week.
As for the team as a whole, the Yankees have now started the season 4-1 heading into their rubber game against the Mariners on Wednesday afternoon. Cam Schlittler, who pitched 5.1 scoreless innings in his first start, will look to continue this string of dominance for Yankees pitching.
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