Hours before the Yankees’ series finale against the Giants, Jhony Brito could be seen moseying around the clubhouse with his AirPods in his ears and his phone in hand.
Calm and collected, nothing indicated that Brito was about to make his major league debut, aside from the lineup posted at the room’s entrance. If the kid was nervous, he certainly didn’t look it.
The same applied during the game, a 6-0 Yankees win, as Brito stifled San Francisco over five scoreless frames. The 25-year-old righty — thrust into the Yankees’ season-opening rotation strictly due to injuries — held the Giants to two hits and one walk while striking out six over 76 pitches.
“I always thought about debuting and having a good debut,” Brito said postgame. “You have to be confident to do your job. If you start thinking of bad outcomes, that’s usually when things get out of hand.”
Brito’s changeup gave the Giants fits all afternoon. He threw the pitch 37% percent of the time, using it to induce 11 whiffs. The Dominican native picked up 16 total whiffs, with the rest coming from his fastball, sinker and breaking balls.
“It’s got great action on it,” Aaron Boone said of Brito’s changeup. “It’s a real good pitch for him, especially when you’re throwing 95, 96, 97 miles an hour up there.”
Catcher Kyle Higashioka, who made his first start of the season Sunday, agreed, noting that Brito’s changeup looks “really similar to his fastball.”
“Probably more than most guys,” the backstop continued, “so it’s hard to tell out of the hand.”
In the Yankees’ perfect world, Brito would have spent Sunday at Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, where he recorded a 3.31 ERA last season. Even he admitted that he never foresaw himself starting the season in the Yankees’ rotation when he arrived at spring training.
“Very surprising,” Brito said of his opportunity. “You know, the whole thing was not expected.”
But Luis Severino’s lat injury forced the Yankees to dip deeper into their pitching depth, thus creating space for Brito. Domingo German and Clarke Schmidt were already filling in for Carlos Rodon and Frankie Montas, so Brito became the next man up when Severino went down.
Brito impressed in camp before and after he had a shot of making the team, tallying a 2.08 ERA overall and recording 5.1 perfect innings in his final start of the spring.
Brito said that Severino, German, Jimmy Cordero and Wandy Peralta all gave him pointers for his debut prior to the game. Afterward, he received the Yankees Player of the Game wrestling-style belt and posed for pictures with it. The recipient of the belt has to make a speech; Brito used his to thank his teammates for their support.
While Brito dealt in his debut, the Bronx Bombers beat up on the Giants in their series-clinching victory.
For the second time in three games, Aaron Judge started the scoring with a line drive home run. Giancarlo Stanton then belted a ball 485 feet, clearing the tinted glass batter’s eye at Yankee Stadium for a two-run shot.
“G’s weird,” Boone said when asked for a reaction to Stanton’s mammoth shot. “Every time he comes in after one of those, I just tell him, ‘You’re weird. You’re different.’
“I knew it was going over the batter’s eye right away.”
The Yankees are now 29-2 when Stanton and Judge homer in the same game. The only losses came at the Field of Dreams game in Iowa in 2021 and when Judge hit his record-setting 62nd home run in Texas last season.
“That means we gotta keep doing it,” Stanton said when informed of the Yankees’ record in such games.
Higashioka also homered Sunday.
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