The team with baseball's best record, the New York Yankees, played a 3-game series against the team with baseball's worst record, the Miami Marlins, at the new Yankee Stadium.
Nestor Cortés started the series opener, and it was easily the best Yankee starting pitching performance of the season thus far: 8 innings, no runs, 2 hits, no walks, 6 strikeouts. Josh Maciejewski pitched a perfect 9th, making it a Cuban-Polish 2-hit shutout.
Anthony Volpe and Juan Soto hit home runs. Each had 3 RBIs on the night. Alex Verdugo went 3-for-3 with a walk and an RBI. The Yankees won, 7-0.
In a game pushed back to a night start due to the total solar eclipse earlier in the day, the Yankees won the Tuesday night game, 3-2. Carlos Rodón pitched 6 innings, allowing 2 runs, neither of them earned, on 4 hits and 2 walks, striking out 6. Ian Hamilton pitched a scoreless 7th and 8th, and Clay Holmes pitched a perfect 9th.
Verdugo hit a home run. Aaron Judge did not: He went 1-for-1... with 3 walks. Shades of Barry Bonds, but from the right side, and minus the cheating (as far as we know).
The Yankees were 10-2 to start the season, with (so far) no Gerrit Cole, no DJ LeMahieu, Jonathan Loáisiga is out for the season with an injury, the catchers were batting a combined .108 at the end of that game, Judge was batting .195, Gleyber Torres was batting .200, Verdugo was batting .220 in spite of doing well those last 2 games, and, except for Cortés on Monday, none of the starting pitchers had put up an especially noteworthy performance.
How is this happening? Are we simply getting 14 years of bad luck turned around in 1 season?
Not in the series finale, we weren't. Giancarlo Stanton hit a home run, and Soto had an RBI double. Other than that, the Yankees got only 3 hits. Marcus Stroman was shaky, and the Yankees lost, 5-2.
At 10-3, the Yankees still have the best record in baseball. They have today off. Tomorrow, they start a roadtrip with 3 games against the Cleveland Guardians.