Hour 1: Judge Criticisms

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**Michael Kay** (0:26)
And a good afternoon, everybody. This is indeed The Michael Kay Show. We thank you for joining us on this Friday, March 27, 2026
It's me and you for two. Those are the rules of engagement. You know the deal. It's the fastest two hours in Sports Talk Radio. And it's made even more special because it's a free for all Friday. You're not locked in to asking questions about a topic I bring up. You can bring up whatever you want. That's the way it works. I am coming to you live from the booth at Oracle Park in San Francisco, where today the Yankees will play the second game of their season. It will be the Yankees against the Giants. And Cameron Schlitler will be on the mound. And he will be facing Robbie Ray, the former Cy Young Award winner. And should be a good game. No lineups yet. We'll get those to you as soon as possible. Now, the Mets have the day off today after beating the Pirates 11-7 yesterday. Things went quite well for the Mets. Carson Benj with the home run. Great. First big league game. Francisco Alvarez with the home run. The Mets need him to be the player that he was before the last year or so. Because he is a much better offensive player than he has shown. And he has to be a great offensive player simply because of the fact he's not a terrific defender. He's okay, but he's not a top flight defender. So they need big time offense out of him. So Benj and Alvarez with home runs. The Mets had 11 hits. They had nine walks. Peralta didn't pitch great. Gave them just five innings. He allowed six hits and four run runs. That's okay. First game, he's a stud. That guy is going to be fine. And he did get the win in the game against the Pirates and Paul Skeens, who was knocked out after just two outs in the first inning. He wasn't helped by bad defense by O'Neill Cruz. And one thing that's amazing, the Mets always seem to win on opening day. Always. You know, their record is 42 and 23 in their history in opening day. That's unbelievable. Now, the Yankee record is fourth best at 71, 52 and one. But I mean, it's a different animal at 42 and 23 So congratulations to the Mets. One thing that I noticed watching that game yesterday is that this lineup might not be as dangerous power wise because you don't have Pete Alonso in it. But it's dangerous in another way. And the way that it's dangerous is this. They really work the count. They make pitchers work. They will make the opposing pitcher throw strikes. And if you can get into the bullpen, the middle of the bullpen, that's where you could do some damage. So if you can get 90 pitches from a starting pitcher over five innings, you've done your job. They're going to get on base. They're going to work the count. They're going to walk. That is the deal with the Mets this year. Up and down the lineup from one to nine, they can work the count. They're a smart, offensive team. And that's what David Stearns wanted to build. So they take a little bit of the power away by allowing Peter Lanzer to sign with the Orioles. But the bottom line is they're a different offensive threat because of the fact they work the count constantly. And they have a good eye. They're good baseball players. Bichette, Polanco, those guys can play. Also positive from yesterday's game, Luis Robert Jr. made a nice play in center field, worked a walk, stole a base, got a hit. This guy could be the X Factor on this team. They bought low, and the reason they were able to get them is that they assumed all of the money that was remaining on the contract that the White Sox didn't want to pay. And this guy is the guy who's had 30 some-odd home runs in a year. And the only problem with him is not his talent. The problem with him has been the fact that he can't stay healthy. If they can keep him healthy, and they were very careful with him during spring training, very careful, because what they did was they didn't play him for the first half of spring training. They were building up his lower body. And if they could keep him healthy and have him play 140 games. So that allows them to miss 22 games. 140 games, it's going to be a home run for them, because this guy can play. This guy can play. Now the Yankees opening night here in San Francisco, they won 7-0. And we've told the story over and over again. They didn't hit home runs. They worked the count. The bottom of the order did quite well. A really strong performance by Max Friede, who didn't have his best stuff, but grinded through. An impressive six and a third shutout innings. And the bullpen took care of the rest. But the one negative that everybody seized upon, and we talked about this at length yesterday, was Aaron Judge was for 5 with four strikeouts. And by the way, in his MVP year last year, he did not have one game where he struck out four times. Not one. Not one. And I said that people are using this as a narrative, and they want to attack this guy who not only is a great player, but a great representative for baseball, and especially the Yankees. Never embarrass them. Never say the wrong thing. Never do the wrong thing. Never be caught in the wrong situation. He's the perfect face for a franchise. But still, people find something bad to say. And that seems to be the new deal. You know, they jumped on him because he didn't get a hit in the WBC final game. You know, the narrative is that he doesn't hit in big games. Nonsense. I've given you numbers that disprove that. But when I open the phones to such stuff, people always say, I mean, you're just, not many people say that. The real Yankee fans don't believe that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And, you know, maybe you're right. But there is an indication that maybe you're wrong. So after the Met game ended yesterday, I went to Alcatraz. In all the years I've been covering baseball and coming out to Oakland and San Francisco, never been to Alcatraz. So I went there yesterday. It's very depressing. It's very sobering, too.