Aaron Judge hits two of Yankees' six solo home runs to help beat Cubs
Aaron Judge #99 of the Yankees celebrates his fifth inning home run against the Chicago Cubs at Yankee Stadium on Saturday, June 11, 2022. Credit: Jim McIsaac
This is what currently passes for “concern” for the Yankees.
Gerrit Cole’s 2 1⁄3-inning outing Thursday night in Minneapolis coupled with Friday night’s 13-inning marathon left Aaron Boone, in the parlance of the sport, a bit “short” in his bullpen Saturday night.
Jordan Montgomery and an offense that produced six solo homers in the first five innings took care of that.
With Montgomery tying his season high by lasting seven innings and Aaron Judge increasing his MLB-leading total to 24 with two home runs, the Yankees coasted to an 8-0 victory over the Cubs at the Stadium.
Judge has hit 23 homers and driven in 46 runs in his last 44 games. The Yankees also got homers from Giancarlo Stanton, Gleyber Torres, Jose Trevino and Anthony Rizzo. They are a season-high 27 games over .500 at 43-16 and have won 10 of their last 11 games and 36 of their last 46.
Stanton (No. 13) and Torres (No. 12) homered on consecutive pitches in the fourth inning and Trevino, Judge and Rizzo (No. 15) homered in the fifth against overwhelmed Cubs rookie righthander Matt Swarmer. Stanton’s 436-foot blast left the bat at 119.8 mph, the highest exit velocity recorded in MLB this season.
“It’s quite a sight,” Judge said of Stanton’s shot. “You try to soak it all in, the moment, because when he hits one like that . . . you don’t see that every day.”
Swarmer came in 1-0 with a 1.50 ERA, but making his first start away from home against a team that now has an MLB-best 94 homers proved too tall a task.
“It’s exciting,” Judge said. “I’m a sucker for a good rally, a nice double in the gap with runners in scoring position. But six solo shots with one single [of the seven hits off Swarmer] looks pretty nice too.”
Montgomery, victimized by a lack of run support in the vast majority of his starts dating to last season, did not have that problem Saturday night. The lefthander was his usual crisp self, allowing five hits and zero walks in improving to 2-1 with a 2.70 ERA this season.
“Seven huge innings,” Boone said. “It was going to be a struggle if we didn’t get length. Just what the doctor ordered.”
He joked: “I was making sure I was up to date on the rules for position players pitching and all that going into the day.”
He said later that Rizzo, should that day come, probably would be the position player getting the nod. “Rizzo’s bugging me to pitch every other day,” Boone said with a smile. “Every time I go make a pitching change, he’s loosening his arm on the mound. He’ll get his day.”
Montgomery made sure that day wasn’t Friday. “We played [13] innings [Friday] and used basically everybody,” he said. “I was ready to go out there and throw as many pitches as we could. I just wanted to give as many innings as I could.”
The Cubs went 0-for-7 with runners in scoring position, dropping them to 0-for-32 in the last three games and 10-for-81 in the last six.
On Swarmer’s second pitch of the game, Judge blasted a 90-mph fastball into the seats in left.
With one out in the fourth, Stanton annihilated a 2-and-2 slider to left for a 2-0 lead. On the next pitch, Torres drove the ball to right-center into the Yankees’ bullpen for the second night in a row.
Trevino led off the fifth by yanking a 1-and-1 fastball off the leftfield foul pole for his fifth homer. One out later, Judge blasted No. 24, which came off his bat at 115.5 mph and traveled 431 feet to left-center. Two batters later, it became 6-0 when Rizzo slammed a full-count fastball deep into the night in right-center.
An RBI single by Isiah Kiner-Falefa and a sacrifice fly by Judge in the sixth made it 8-0.
“Having all that run support helped,” Montgomery said. “Could be aggressive with my two- seamer and changeup.”
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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