Aaron Judge hits 49th homer to back Gerrit Cole in Yankees' win over A's

The Yankees' Aaron Judge rounds the bases after hitting a three-run home run against the Athletics during the fifth inning of a game in Oakland, Calif., on Friday. Credit: AP/Jeff Chiu
OAKLAND, Calif. — Matt Carpenter took stock of Aaron Judge’s season after watching him crush his 37th homer on July 24 in Baltimore.
“To me, he looks like the guy who lied on his birth certificate on the 12-year-old All-Stars,” Carpenter said that afternoon. “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.”
Cavernous Oakland Coliseum, bigger than most, certainly wasn’t Friday night.
Judge hit his MLB-leading 49th homer — a 427-foot three-run shot to dead centerfield off former Yankee JP Sears in the fifth inning — to back Gerrit Cole as the Yankees earned a 3-2 victory over the A’s.
“For me, it’s really special,’’ Cole said. “I get to have the best seat in the house every night for the Aaron Judge Show, which is one of a kind right now.”
Judge, who went 1-for-2 with two walks, is one away from becoming the first big-leaguer to reach the 50-homer plateau since the Mets’ Pete Alonso (53) did it in 2019.
The last American Leaguer to reach 50? Judge, who hit 52 during his AL Rookie of the Year season in 2017. (Alonso then broke Judge’s MLB rookie record.)
The last Yankee to hit 50 in a season before Judge was Alex Rodriguez, who had 54 in 2007.
Judge, who grew up a little more than an hour away from Oakland in Linden, California, was asked if he ever thought about hitting 50 homers. “I didn’t think about it a lot,'' he said. "I just tried to be a great hitter. Be a great player, be a great teammate. Show up day in and day out, that was always my goal. Never really looked at numbers. I looked at numbers when I played MLB The Show, but that was about it.”
Judge’s pace projects to 63 for the season, which would be an American League record. He moved into a tie with Babe Ruth (1930) and Lou Gehrig (1934 and 1936) for the 10th-highest single-season total in franchise history.
After failing to hit a home run for nine straight games, Judge has three in his last four games. He leads MLB with 109 RBIs.
“I looked at the same thing,’’ Aaron Boone said. “Said the same thing in his next at-bat. I’m like, ’49 and 109 and it’s August.’ It’s remarkable. It’s remarkable what he’s doing.”
Now that he's one away from 50, what does that number mean to Judge? “Nothing,'' he said. "It’s just another number. Happy to get another win, keep this winning streak going and just provide some runs for the great start that Cole had today. That was pretty impressive to watch.”
Cole (10-6, 3.31) had gone 0-4 with a 4.62 ERA in his previous six starts and had not won since July 17 but was as good as he’s been all year. The righthander allowed one run and three hits in 7 1⁄3 innings, striking out 11 and walking two.
The run came on Jonah Bride’s first career homer, a shot to leftfield in the seventh that made it 3-1.
“I thought he had a great slider tonight,’’ Boone said. “I thought he did a really good job early on of just kind of staying tall and creating good angles with his pitches. He had a good fastball going, but I thought his slider was especially good tonight. And then he got efficient in a lot of innings, which allowed him to get deep into the game.”
Said Judge, “He was on from the very first pitch he threw. When you see a guy come out in the first inning and do what he did, I was like, ‘He’s going to be rolling for a while.’ ”
Cole, who threw 110 pitches, allowed a single by Nick Allen to begin the eighth and retired Tony Kemp on a fly to center. Jonathan Loaisiga got Shea Langeliers to pop to first and struck out Sean Murphy to get out of it.
Chad Pinder doubled off Wandy Peralta with one out in the ninth and Dermis Garcia singled to make it 3-2. But the lefthander struck out Bride and pinch hitter David MacKinnon for his third save in eight tries.
“I don’t worry about him heartbeat-wise,’’ Boone said. “He’s fearless . . . Certainly feel that Wandy’s going to handle any situation he’s put in.”
It was the fifth straight victory for the Yankees (78-48) and a completely different game from their 13-4 win over the A’s in Thursday night’s opener of this three-city, 10-game trip.
Yankees catcher Jose Trevino was hit by a pitch on his right foot by a fastball from Jared Koenig in the eighth and Kyle Higashioka replaced him in the ninth. “We just got X-rays [back] negative, so that’s obviously a big exhale,’’ Boone said. “So hopefully it’s just something we can deal with. See how he is tomorrow. Obviously, you fear the worst when you see it, but good news on the X-ray front.”