For years, critics cried about the Yankees‘ lack of left-handed bats to balance the lineup. Turns out what they were really missing was an old Italian to sit on the porch all day. Anthony Rizzo, fresh off a third-place finish in the 2022 Offseason First Base Race (according to Yankee fans and rivals), has opened the season looking like an energized version of his immediate post-2021 trade deadline self.

You remember that Riz that nobody beat, right? He arrived from Chicago and energized the Bombers in a hotly-contested, well-pitched road series in Miami, then returned home and tested positive for COVID almost immediately. Then, for the rest of his season, he was treading water, sitting in the same slightly-above-league-average OPS+ range that doomed him to also ran status in 2021-22’s abbreviated free agency cycle.