NEW YORK -- The Baby Bombers showed out Tuesday night. The Yankees, a team not exactly known for its player development, started five homegrown position players and a homegrown starting pitcher in Game 1 of the Wild Card Series, and those six players carried New York to a win over the rival Red Sox (NY 9, BOS 0). The Yankees lead the best-of-three series 1-0.
"The homegrown guys were really good tonight," Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. "One of those really special nights at Yankee Stadium. There was a buzz, then obviously, when it got broken open late, turned into a pretty cool night."
Just like last year's Wild Card Series, Cam Schlittler shut the Red Sox down Tuesday, holding them to two singles and one walk in 6 ⅓ innings. He threw a career-high 117 pitches, 10 more than last year's Game 3 masterpiece against Boston. The Red Sox missed with 24 of their 59 swings against Schlittler for an exception 41% whiff rate. That's closer stuff as a starting pitcher.
"The job's not done. We've gotta get another win tomorrow," Schlittler said. "But it's very well known that if you want to be a legend, which is obviously the goal, you've got to do it in the postseason. Go out there and have dominant starts and put the team in the position to win. And that's kind of the most important thing."
The Yankees had first-round picks at the four up-the-middle positions in Game 1: Austin Wells (2020) at catcher, Anthony Volpe (2019) at second base, George Lombard Jr. (2023) at shortstop, and Spencer Jones (2022) in center field. The first three strung together singles in the second inning to score the game's first run against lefty Payton Tolle.
Another homegrown Yankee, 41-homer man Ben Rice, took lefty Erik Miller deep to dead center field for a 2-0 lead in the fifth inning. He added an RBI single in the seventh inning and a grand slam to put the game to bed in the eighth inning. Rice went 4 for 5 with two homers and 6 RBI in Game 1. The 6 RBI tie a franchise postseason record.
Rice, like Schlittler, was a late-round draft pick who grew up in Massachusetts, selected in the 12th round in 2021. Schlittler was a seventh-round pick in 2022. The Yankees plucked two Red Sox killers out of their backyard.
"The connections that I had in college with the scouts, the Red Sox really weren't one of those," Schlittler said on Monday. "(Yankees Northeast scout) Matty Hyde was kind of my guy. And he had a lot of faith in me, and he's the reason why I'm a Yankee. He's someone I credit a lot and someone I still talk to a lot this day, and we have a great connection."
The five homegrown Yankees -- Jones, Lombard, Rice, Volpe, Wells -- went a combined 11 for 18 with a double, two homers, a walk, a sacrifice fly, and 8 RBI in Game 1. Lombard had three hits and, at 21 years and 119 days, is the second-youngest Yankees position player to ever start a postseason game. Only the great Mickey Mantle was younger.
Of course, the Yankees are without their greatest homegrown player. Aaron Judge, New York's 2013 first-round selection, is not on the Wild Card Series roster as he recovers from a late-season calf strain. The Yankees simply aren't the same team without Judge and the question coming into the postseason was whether everyone else would pick up the slack.
Rice answered that question with an emphatic "yes." The homegrown Yankees answered that question with an emphatic "yes." Schlittler was dominant, Lombard and Volpe were crucial on both sides of the ball, Wells drove in two runs and guided the pitching staff through the shutout win. This is what it's supposed to look like. Players growing together in the minors, then excelling in the majors together.
"It's a more confident group," Boone said about not having Judge. "But it's one game. As much as tonight was a special night here in the Bronx, and you could feel that energy, it was electric and so many guys played so well, you enjoy it for a minute. But it's getting right back after it tomorrow knowing that we'll have a chance to close it out. We've got the blinders on, but it's a confident group in knowing that we can, if we play our game, we can beat anyone."
This is, without exaggeration, the best collection of homegrown Yankees since the Core Four in the late 1990s and early 2000s. There was a Robinson Canó here and a Brett Gardner there, but never once in the last 20 years or so did the Yankees trot out a mostly homegrown starting lineup and starting pitcher in a postseason game. It seemed like it would never happen.
This group has a very, very, very long way to go before it can be mentioned in the same conversation as the Core Four. The more important thing is that, right now, players drafted and developed by the Yankees led them to a postseason win over the Red Sox. They've found stars in Schlittler and Rice and, at minimum, strong complementary players everywhere else. Those are all major wins for the organization.
The Yankees will turn to one of their high-priced free-agent signings -- Max Fried -- in Game 2 on Wednesday. The Red Sox will give the ball to former Yankee Sonny Gray with their season on the line.
