The 2026 season has arrived, starting with a 7-0 blowout victory for the New York Yankees over the San Francisco Giants on Wednesday night and continuing with season openers for the rest of MLB on Thursday and Friday. Whether it was ace showdowns, powerhouse matchups or new faces in new places you want to see, there was something for everyone in Thursday’s games.
What are we watching as the season gets started? Here’s our takeaway from each completed game and a pregame look at what you need to know for the remaining games Friday (including lineups, each team’s initial 2026 Power Ranking and final offseason grade).
As for the Astros, their concerns heading into the season were lineup depth and bullpen depth. They didn’t score, and the bullpen allowed all three runs. — David Schoenfield
After some aces got touched up in their first outings of the year, Cristopher Sanchez threw a masterful — and typical — six innings for the Phillies. Texas managed just three hits, didn’t draw a walk and struck out 10 times, including the final three batters Sanchez faced. The last was particularly nasty, a left-on-left changeup — one of the hardest pitches to throw effectively — that got Corey Seager swinging.
A howling wind knocked down one ball for him, but Matthew Boyd didn’t look like the pitcher who made the All-Star team last season and was a member of Team USA in this year’s World Baseball Classic. He gave up six earned runs to the lowly Nationals, who jumped on all sorts of hittable pitches during a six-run fourth inning.
It was more runs than Boyd gave up in any start last season. He was chased after just 3⅔ innings after the Cubs handed him a 2-1 lead. The veteran lefty faded some down the stretch last year, so was this a sign of things to come or a simple Day 1 bad outing? The good news is he struck out seven batters over the first three innings before falling apart. — Jesse Rogers
It has become something close to a legal obligation to assess the Yankees’ offseason by using the words run it back. But lost in the implied criticism of the team’s offseason, which included no splashy additions, is this: The guys they’re running it back with are pretty good.
Biggest change since we saw them last: It wasn’t the splashiest offseason for the Athletics, but their biggest move was adding veteran Jeff McNeil to their already-promising lineup in a trade with the Mets.
Biggest change since we saw them last: It’s a whole new ballgame for the Rockies, who turned their baseball operations department over to former Cleveland Browns (yes, you read that right) exec Paul DePodesta.
Biggest change since we saw them last: Acquired in an offseason trade with the Cubs for starter Edward Cabrera, Owen Caissie is an outfielder with the kind of offensive upside the Marlins have been craving.
Biggest change since we saw them last: Mike Yastrzemski was originally signed as a fourth outfielder in a busy offseason for the Braves, but his role became even more important when Jurickson Profar was suspended for the entire 2026 season after his second positive PED test.
It’s always nice when your biggest stars show up on Opening Day, and that’s what happened with the Red Sox. Garrett Crochet, aiming to end Tarik Skubal’s run of Cy Young Awards, pitched six scoreless innings. Crochet escaped a one-out bases-loaded jam in the sixth inning of a scoreless game, striking out Eugenio Suarez and Spencer Steer. Roman Anthony, who hit leadoff and went 3-for-4 with a walk and is already a star. He will score a ton of runs. And let’s call Garrett Whitlock and Aroldis Chapman the other big stars for the Red Sox. The relief duo was dominant a year ago and closed this one out after the Red Sox tacked on a couple of late runs. — David Schoenfield
A year ago, 37 games separated the 97-65 Brewers from the 60-102 White Sox in the MLB-level standings. Despite projections that suggested the gap had narrowed, Opening Day certainly felt like it has not. The Brewers began the day with the unexpected news that Jackson Chourio had landed on the injured list, but that didn’t stop them from dominating the White Sox in every phase. From Jacob Misiorowski’s franchise-record 11 Opening Day strikeouts to the strike zone dominance of the entire Brewers lineup, it was no contest from the early innings. Even the sausage race, won by the Italian Sausage, was a blowout. For now, 2026 looks for both teams a lot like 2025. But it was, after all, only one game. — Bradford Doolittle
That’s not how anyone envisioned Paul Skenes would launch his NL Cy Young Award defense. An unusual lack of execution combined with misfortune and terrible defense behind him produced the worst start of Skenes’ young career. The right-hander gave up five runs on four hits, a walk and a hit batter over just two-thirds of an inning. The Mets’ first two hits were a bloop single and a swinging bunt, but they made Skenes work. New York fouled off 10 of his 37 pitches and, other than Carson Benge’s strikeout on three whiffs in his first career plate appearance, swung through just two. And yet Skenes would’ve escaped the trouble had center fielder Oneil Cruz not botched back-to-back routine plays, which led to four runs instead of the end of the inning. If Cruz makes those plays, Skenes gets through the inning and could’ve rebounded. But he wasn’t sharp, and it cost him. — Jorge Castillo
Vitello became the first person to go directly from college head coach to big league manager, and Giants president of baseball operations Buster Posey made the out-of-the-box decision in part to inject the former Tennessee head coach’s unique brand of energy and intensity into a team that has hovered around .500 for the past four seasons. But a pitcher like Fried can sap the energy of even the most rabid group, and with him on the mound, the Yankees’ five-run second inning made the outcome all but inevitable. — Tim Keown
Jump to: Relive the action | Takeaways | Friday games
In the first game of the 2026 season, a stand-alone spectacle at Oracle Park that was long on pomp and short on suspense, Max Fried cruised through 6⅓ innings, allowing just two hits and one runner past first base, as the Yankees beat the Giants and made rookie manager Tony Vitello’s debut one he’ll probably want to forget.
First pitch: 7:07 p.m. ET | Pitching matchup: Luis Severino vs. Kevin Gausman
First pitch: 7:15 p.m. ET | Pitching matchup: Kyle Freeland vs. Sandy Alcantara
First pitch: 7:15 p.m. ET | Pitching matchup: Cole Ragans vs. Chris Sale
Mike Trout breaks deadlock with a HR to the train tracks (0:19)Mike Trout belts it out of the park with a solo homer to give Angels the lead. (0:19)