Yankees announce their Opening Day lineup!

With less than 24 hours to go until Opening Day in Toronto the Yankees lineup is already set. Is this the lineup we will see for most of the season?

It seems new skipper Aaron Boone is already ahead of the curve after he released his first lineup as Yankees manager a day early. Here’s how they’ll lineup tomorrow afternoon at 3:37 ET.

1. LF Brett Gardner
2. RF Aaron Judge
3. DH Giancarlo Stanton
4. C Gary Sanchez
5. CF Aaron Hicks
6. SS Didi Gregorius
7. 3B Brandon Drury
8. 2B Neil Walker
9. 1B Tyler Austin

SP: Luis Severino

At first glance, this is the starting nine many expected to open up the season. With Blue Jay’s lefty J.A. Happ on the mound, it’s no surprise to see right-handed hitting Tyler Austin at first and the switch-hitting Neil Walker at second. You could say Tyler Wade deserved to start after his impressive spring, but this is just one game out of 162 and he’ll get his time to shine over the first few weeks of the season.

I thought there was a chance we would see Aaron Judge leading off against the left-hander but there was no doubt Brett Gardner was going to be in the lineup. As the longest tenured Yankee, he deserved to get the start and bat in his customary leadoff spot.

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With Gardner starting in left field that means we’ll see Giancarlo Stanton make his Yankees debut at DH. That should be the case for most of the season.

One thing you’ll notice is the power trio of Judge, Stanton, and Sanchez batting back to back to back. Against the left-hander Happ, I don’t think there was any other way to go. It’s going to be a tall task to get past those three and just for intimidation purposes it sends a strong message to the rest of the league to open up the season.

The only thing that somewhat surprised me about this lineup was Aaron Hicks in the five hole behind Sanchez. It would be unfair to already start complaining about Aaron Boone’s lineup choices when they’ve yet to play a single game, but I thought Didi would fill that spot.

I know Hicks is a switch hitter so in terms of splitting up lefties and righties it makes sense, but Didi is a better hitter than Hicks. Batting Hicks in front of him isn’t that big of a deal, especially in game number one, but I’d rather have Didi get that extra at-bat over Hicks if it came down to it.

Next: Predictions for the 2018 season

Overall this is a pretty solid Yankees lineup to open things up against a left-hander. As I’ve said before, however Boone chooses to build his lineup this Yankee offense is going to score runs in bunches no matter what the order is.

The time for analyzing is all over. Now it’s time to go out and win some games.