Apparently the Yankees and the Giants are only playing island games this season.
After getting the 2026 MLB campaign underway with a primetime tilt on Netflix on Wednesday, New York and San Francisco will now square-off for game No. 2 at 4:35 p.m. ET this afternoon. I’m honestly not complaining. It’s nice to have baseball on at all hours of the day. It’s sort of the best thing about the opening week of the season.
Can the Giants bounce-back after getting shutout? Or will the Yankees move to 2-0? Let’s preview this Friday matinee with the help of some odds and lines on the DraftKings Sportsbook.
Yankees vs. Giants prediction, preview
Playing for the Yankees certainly helps one’s ability to make an impression on the sport, but even with that caveat in mind, it’s difficult not to celebrate the exploits of Cam Schlittler’s rookie campaign. An imposing right-hander with 95th percentile average fastball velocity (98.0), Schlittler cruised to a 2.96 ERA and a 27.6% strikeout rate in the first 14 starts of his career. Were there a couple of red flags? Of course. The 25-year-old will likely need to lower a 10.2% walk rate, especially because opponents aren’t going to continue to slash .200/.328/.200 with RISP. That’s how you benefit from an 84.5% strand rate — the fourth-highest mark in the league among starters with at least 70 innings thrown. Still, Schlittler followed up his regular season success by throwing eight scoreless with 12 strikeouts against the rival Red Sox in Game 3 of the Wild Card round. I’m not sure how you could’ve watched that and not been all-in on Schlittler’s credentials.
Opposing Schlittler this afternoon will be Robbie Ray. The veteran southpaw has been much less heralded than his sophomore counterpart, yet it would be unwise to sell Ray short. Injury cost the 34-year-old most of 2023 and 2024, but Ray’s been amazing when healthy the last half-decade. In 2021, he won the American League Cy Young in his lone full-season with the Blue Jays. He then translated that to a massive contract from the Mariners, a contract that looked perfectly reasonable after Ray posted a 3.60 xERA across 32 starts in 2022. Last season, Ray was finally back in good form, and he managed a 3.65 ERA and a 3.70 xERA over 182.1 innings with the Giants. Ray’s always been an extreme fly ball pitcher, which has allowed him to maintain low opponent BABIPs. However, it’s often made him very susceptible to the long ball. If you had to pick an ideal home park for the southpaw, it would probably be Oracle. I doubt that was a coincidence for San Francisco’s front office.
While Ray will likely get more run support than Logan Webb got on Wednesday, he’ll need to quiet a very productive Yankees lineup. It’s also a lineup that’s virtually identical to last season, which is great news for New York, as it crushed LHPs in 2025. To wit, the Yankees led baseball in slugging percentage (.457), wOBA (.339) and wRC+ (121) within the split. That’s obviously not all because of one player, yet it’s worth pointing out that Aaron Judge had an eye-popping .483 expected wOBA versus lefties — a figure that was over 30 points higher than any other qualified batter. In their past meetings, Judge has three hits off Ray. All three have left the park.
Yankees vs. Giants pick, best bet
Best Bet: Aaron Judge 2+ Total Bases (-117)
Judge is just so good against left-handed pitchers in general, and that’s before specifically getting into his history with Ray. There’s no way he’s hitless through the Yankees’ first two games of the season.
Strong Lean: Yankees ML (-136)
Schlittler’s legit and New York punished southpaws more than any other team in 2025. Even on the road, this isn’t too bad a number.
