Daily Report – 3/30/26
Yankees
The Yankees could not have scripted a better start to their season. In a year when their bullpen is arguably their biggest question, six different relievers combined to allow zero runs through 11 innings in three games this weekend. Overall, the Yankees set a franchise record with 20 scoreless frames to start the year.
Following a 3-0 win on Friday, highlighted by home runs from Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, the captain struck again on Saturday as the Yankees completed the sweep over San Francisco with a 3-1 win. In the top of the fifth inning, he launched a solo shot – his 370th career dinger – into left field, denting the roof of an ambulance.
Judge was happy to tie Gil Hodges for 83rd all-time in home runs. He was especially appreciative of the opportunity to do it in his hometown stadium. “This is a ballpark I grew up coming to, watching a lot of great players come through here,” said Judge, who grew up in Linden, California. “To get a chance to step out on that field and soak up the atmosphere, that was the coolest thing for me.”
On Opening Night, Judge was the only member of the Yankees’ starting lineup to go hitless. He made up for that in the second and third games of the series, returning to where he belongs: the pole position of his team’s home run list.
But there was something unique about his shot on Friday. It came against the seventh pitch of an at-bat in which Judge challenged a low-pitch strike call. Judge, who has been the victim of many a low strike call throughout his career, was challenged correctly. He turned a 1-1 count into a 2-0 count, gaining extra time to assess Robbie Ray. Judge waited until the count was full before driving a fastball 405 feet to left field.
“It’s funny,” said Cody Bellinger, whose .364 batting average and 1.007 OPS are the second-highest on the Yankees through three games (behind Giancarlo Stanton). “He’s so tall, and somehow he gets rung up on that call. I see it hitting behind him all the time. It’s going to be good for him. He knows the zone really well, and obviously, it worked out that time.”
On Saturday, in addition to Judge’s second blast of the season, Ben Rice drove in two runs with a third-inning double. He only needed to add a few more degrees to hit to clear the right-field fence, but at 376 feet, it was one of several Yankees hits this weekend that could have cleared Yankee Stadium.
Hitting cleanup behind Bellinger, Rice is a key offensive player on this team. Heading into this season, because of the success he had last year, showcasing a consistently high exit velocity, the only concern was his defense. But in San Francisco, he was excellent as New York’s starting first baseman. Yesterday, he was part of four double plays, with help from Jazz Chisholm Jr. and José Caballero.
“I’m just happy to be on the end of each one of those and finish it off,” Rice said. “Jazz and Cabby were doing their thing today, and shout-out to the pitchers for getting those ground balls.”
In the bottom of Saturday’s sixth inning, with the Yankees ahead 3-1, Rafael Devers doubled off Brent Headrick. Jake Bird replaced Headrick, and after allowing a single to Heliot Ramos to put runners on the corners, he struck out Willy Adames and forced former Yankee Harrison Bader to ground into an inning-ending double play. Bird also secured the first two outs of the seventh inning.
After being traded from Colorado at last year’s deadline, it took six runs allowed in two innings for the Yankees to option Bird to Triple-A. His greatest asset is his sweeper, which averages more horizontal run than the arsenal of most right-handed relievers. But last season, coming from the struggling Rockies, he lost the command of his best pitch.
“It’s good to have a fresh start to go back at it,” said Bird, who, before Saturday, hadn’t pitched a scoreless inning since last June. “These guys with the Yankees are all really smart, and they’ve given me a ton of good stuff.”
One reason why manager Aaron Boone trusted Bird in that tough spot on Saturday was that Camilo Doval was unavailable. On Friday, in his first setup appearance of the season, Doval struck out the side against his former team.
When Doval arrived in New York at last year’s deadline, something wasn’t right. In addition to the countless pitch timer violations he committed, he couldn’t control his cutter. Last season, he used his cutter 40% of the time, and 20% of his pitches were sliders.
The Yankees tried to get Doval to use his slider less often down the stretch last year, but it never clicked, and the righty didn’t have another reliable pitch besides his cutter. In 2025, Doval used his sinker 12% of the time. In two appearances this season, it has occupied 48% of his arsenal.
Each of the batters Doval faced on Friday struck out against his sinker. Heliot Ramos, the first batter he faced, was visibly shocked by what he saw from his former teammate.
Meanwhile, Boone earned his 700th regular-season managerial win on Saturday. He looks to win his 701st tonight when the Yankees visit the Seattle Mariners, the runners-up for last year’s American League pennant (9:40 PM, 8:40 PM CDT – YES, Gotham Sports).
Left-hander Ryan Weathers, who recorded a sky-high 8.83 ERA in four starts this Spring, will look to settle in with the Yankees tonight, who will face the righty Luis Castillo in his first start of the year. Cal Raleigh, who mashed 60 homers last season, is not in Seattle’s starting lineup tonight. Raleigh was the runner-up for the MVP last year, which went to Judge for the third time.
Knicks
The Knicks were right there. For 43 minutes and 40 seconds, they went toe-to-toe with Oklahoma City until Mitchell Robinson turned the ball over to Alex Caruso, who thought he caught a clean break to the hoop before Robinson knocked the ball away and Karl-Anthony Towns dove to save it.
Or so he thought.
Trailing by four points with 4:17 remaining, the Knicks challenged the out-of-bounds call… and lost.
On a night where the Knicks, especially their head coach, spent too much time yelling at the officials, and Jalen Brunson couldn’t score enough points to remedy his defensive woes, the Knicks lost 111-100. In the process, they fell back to 2.5 games behind Boston for second place in the Eastern Conference.
On the subject of poor officiating, Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 13 of his 30 points from the charity stripe. “They have a system, and they do a great job exploiting it in their way,” Brown said.
“I told the team we spent so much time worrying about the officials that we had more turnovers than them. They had more fastbreak points, and they had more second-chance points. So, the officials had nothing to do with that. […] You can’t waste your energy on the officials, and I thought we did that too much tonight.”
For much of the game, it felt like the Knicks were performing at capacity while the Thunder were underperforming. There were points in the game when the Knicks made legitimately good plays, both offensively and defensively. But they couldn’t make it last 48 minutes.
The fact of the matter is, this Knicks team is too talented to justify complaining to the officials as a reason for losing. Let me be clear: Poor officiating is bad. What’s worse is when one championship-caliber team complains and uses the fact that they threw a tantrum on the playground as an excuse for losing to another championship contender.
Let’s be honest: Duke didn’t lose to UConn because the officials neglected to call a technical foul with 0.3 seconds left. They lost because UConn outplayed them in the fourth quarter. It was the same thing for the Knicks yesterday. Oklahoma City was the better team.
However, because the Knicks played so well – and they did play well, for the most part – it would be a petty excuse to blame the officials, and even worse to blame “complaining to the officials.”
Complaining to the officials while going head-to-head against the reigning NBA Champions wastes significant mental energy. That is obvious. Too obvious for an experienced, talented Knicks team to do it. So, complaining to officials can’t be the reason the Knicks lost. It wouldn’t make sense.
Yet, it appeared to be one element in their recipe for failure, in addition to the Thunder being the better team. For example, as great as Towns has been since the All-Star Break, he only took nine shots last night. Towns leads the NBA in triple-doubles, but his 244 fouls also lead the league. He has also been assessed a league-high 63 offensive calls, 28 more than the next player.
The Knicks lost the turnover battle, and officiating, poor or not, played a role there. But poor officiating doesn’t explain how the Knicks were held to four fastbreak points while allowing 15. Spending time complaining might explain it, though.
The most eye-popping stat of this game was that while Gilgeous-Alexander netted 10 points in the fourth quarter, Jalen Brunson was outscored by just as many during the six-and-a-half fourth-quarter minutes he spent on the floor. After the Knicks lost that challenge with 4:17 remaining, the reigning champion Thunder went on a 12-5 run, which included six points from Gilgeous-Alexander, to win the game.
Where was Brunson in clutch time? He was in captivity, suffering the wrath of a double-team. As a result, he got stuck in transition, unable to play defense. He got smothered by the clouds and lost in the storm. The lightning struck too close, and the Thunder was too loud.
In other negative news, upon returning from a 28-game injury stint spent recovering from hernia surgery, Miles McBride reinjured himself yesterday. The Knicks have been without Landry Shamet for four straight games, and the struggling Jose Alvarado, who went 3-for-10 from the field yesterday, can’t defend the backcourt alone. When McBride went down, a gaping hole opened for the Knicks, who now find themselves in desperate need of a win.
The Knicks will try to get back on course tomorrow in Houston when they face Kevin Durant and the Rockets (8 PM, 7 PM CDT – NBC, MSG, Peacock, Gotham Sports).
Schedule
9:40 PM (8:40 PM CDT): NYY at SEA; YES, Gotham Sports; SP: LHP Ryan Weathers (0-0, -.-- ERA) vs. RHP Luis Castillo (0-0, -.-- ERA)
