Aaron Judge hits 37th homer as Yankees defeat Orioles
Yankees' Aaron Judge celebrates after his two-run home run during the third inning of a baseball game against the Baltimore Orioles, Sunday, July 24, 2022, in Baltimore. Credit: AP/Nick Wass
BALTIMORE — Aaron Judge has made it clear that the last thing on his mind is his ballooning-by-the day home run total.
It continues to be very much a source of conversation — not to mention wide-eyed awe — inside the clubhouse, though. Sunday did nothing to quiet that talk.
Hitting his MLB-leading 37th homer — a titanic 456-foot two-run shot in the third inning — Judge helped the Yankees beat the Orioles, 6-0, on a kiln-like 97-degree afternoon in front of 25,623 at Camden Yards.
Judge is on pace to hit 62 homers and surpass the 61 hit by Roger Maris 61 years ago in 1961, which stands as not only the franchise single-season record but the American League record. He is on track to become the first big-leaguer to hit 60 homers in a season since Barry Bonds hit 73 and Sammy Sosa hit 64 in 2001.
In his last 81 games, Judge has 36 home runs and 79 of his 81 RBIs (the Mets' Pete Alonso took the MLB lead at 82 with a three-run homer and an RBI double Sunday night).
“I haven’t played with many guys, outside of maybe Albert [Pujols], that are as impressive as he is,” Matt Carpenter said. “I’ve used this analogy before . . . To me, he looks like the guy who lied on his birth certificate on the 12-year-old All-Stars. That’s what he looks like. Like he’s older than everybody else, bigger and stronger than everybody else, and he’s just beating on people that are inferior to his level of talent. The ballparks aren’t big enough for him . . he’s just really good.”
Judge struck out in his first at-bat Sunday, flailing at a sharp-breaking 77-mph curveball thrown by Dean Kremer. He good-naturedly called his shot in the third — a two-run missile on a hanging curveball that made it 3-0.
“Before his second at-bat, when he’s standing on the [dugout] steps there with me, he apologized for his first at-bat,” Aaron Boone said. “He said, ‘That wasn’t good enough. I’ll get you here.’ Then he hit that ball out and he’s looking at me running home from third base. I mean, he’s a special player in the middle of a special season.”
Judge recalled the exchange with a smile, though not in describing his first at-bat.
“Just took some pitches I shouldn’t have, just a poor [at-bat]. Just had a bad approach up there,” said Judge, who went 2-for-4 with a walk and is hitting .294 with 1.026 OPS. “I told him, ‘I won’t let you down this time.’ ”
Judge, who hit 436- and 465-foot homers and drove in four runs on Friday and went 4-for-5 with two RBIs on Saturday, wound up 8-for-13 with three homers and eight RBIs in the three-game series.
The Yankees (66-31) took two of three from the much-improved Orioles (47-48), who are only five victories shy of their win total from a year ago.
All six of the Yankees' runs scored with two outs. They also got RBI doubles from DJ LeMahieu and Jose Trevino (four hits) and RBI singles from Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Aaron Hicks.
Nestor Cortes, who appeared in Tuesday’s All-Star Game in Los Angeles, was terrific against an increasingly dangerous Baltimore lineup, allowing six hits in six innings in improving to 8-3 with a 2.48 ERA. The lefthander, who has allowed two or fewer earned runs in 13 of his 18 starts, walked none and struck out seven.
He faced all of one jam — first-and-third with one out in the second — and that came about as a result of Gleyber Torres, playing in leftfield as a fourth outfielder, dropping Adley Rutschman’s fly ball to the track. Torres had to go back on the ball and got to it just in front of the wall, but it fell out of the webbing of his glove. It was correctly scored an error before incorrectly being changed to a double.
Ramon Urias lined a single to left to put runners at the corners, but Cortes struck out Tyler Nevin swinging at a slider and Robinson Chirinos swinging at a 93-mph fastball.
“I think all of the other pitches got better because of the fastball command,” said Cortes, who lowered his career ERA at Camden Yards to 0.46 in four outings (three starts). “I was able to command both sides of the plate today, go above the zone when I needed to. It made everything much better.”
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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