ABS, Aaron Judge assist Yankees' series-sweeping win over Giants

Gary Phillips, New York Daily News on Mar 28, 2026

Published in Baseball

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SAN FRANCISCO — Chad Whitson wasn’t close, and Trent Grisham knew it.

With the home plate umpire missing a high 2-2 pitch by 2.7 inches in the third inning of Saturday’s game between the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants, the Bombers’ center fielder immediately tapped his helmet. Lo and behold, the computer overruled Whitson —that happened seven times in the game —and spared Grisham from making what would have been the second out of the inning.

Rather than striking out, Grisham ended up walking and scoring alongside Cody Bellinger on a two-run double from Ben Rice, who shot a down-the-middle Tyler Mahle fastball to Levi’s Landing at Oracle Park. The technologically-assisted sequence proved pivotal in the Yankees’ 3-1, series-sweeping win over San Francisco.

Trent Grisham gets a challenge right by almost three inches

Just a day earlier, Aaron Judge joked that the Yankees have had “too many meetings” about ABS after he successfully used the system for the first time during an at-bat that resulted in a two-run homer. When told of the captain’s quip before Saturday’s game, Aaron Boone admitted that he was “kind of obsessive” about the subject during spring training.

“I wanted to talk about it a lot,” the manager said.

Boone made it a point to tell players why he did or didn’t like almost every challenge the Yankees made throughout camp. He added that he found 8-10 examples from his club and other teams that he felt strongly about. At the end of spring training, he talked through each of them with his players.

The skipper’s goal was to get his squad to “inherently understand” when it’s best to challenge. He also wanted to make sure that they were “stripping the emotion out of” their challenges. He knows someone will slip up with that eventually, “but if we can remove that as much as possible, that’ll be a good thing.”

The makeup of the Yankees’ roster will also help them be good challengers, as catchers Austin Wells and J.C. Escarra are strong defenders; the former has already instantiated a few successful rebuttals behind the plate this season. The team’s hitters, meanwhile, had the second-lowest chase rate (25.5%) in the majors last year.

“That’s my expectation,” Boone said when asked if ABS can be a strength for the Yankees. “We’ve poured a lot into it. I feel like our team makeup should lend itself to this being a good thing for us and an advantage for us, but that’s not a given either. We gotta continue to evolve with it and learn from it, and hopefully it is something that is a strength.”

Speaking of strength, the Yankees also benefited from another Judge homer on Saturday. His fifth-inning solo shot didn’t come with robot assistance this time, though it did hit an ambulance parked behind the left field wall at Oracle Park.

The longball also sparked some MVP chants for Judge, who grew up a Giants fan in nearby Linden, Calif.

On the mound, Will Warren extended the Yankees pitching staff’s season-opening scoreless streak to 20 innings before allowing an RBI single to Matt Chapman in the third inning. While that was the only run the righty allowed, Warren only lasted 4 1/3 innings in a season debut that also included five hits, two walks, three strikeouts and 83 pitches.

The Yankees’ best pitching performance of the day came from Jake Bird, who totaled five outs and escaped a first-and-third, nobody-out jam in the sixth when he fanned Willy Adames and got Harrison Bader to ground into a double play.

With the Yankees off to a perfect 3-0 start, they can enjoy a rare Sunday off. They’ll begin a three-game series in Seattle on Monday. Starter Ryan Weathers will make his Yankees debut and face off against the Mariners’ Luis Castillo.

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