Yankees hold on to edge Blue Jays after taking seven-run lead on homers by Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Rizzo
Yankees’ Anthony Rizzo is greeted by Aaron Judge after his two-run home run during the fifth inning against the Toronto Blue Jays in an MLB baseball game at Yankee Stadium on Saturday, April 6, 2024. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Yankees have lost their ace for a few months and their setup man until at least next year. Their third baseman just started taking batting practice and is in for a long road back from a fractured foot.
That still wasn’t enough to stop them Saturday night.
Not when this lineup can hit miles of home runs, and not when their pitching is just good enough to keep opposing batters off balance. And not when you can pencil in Juan Soto and Aaron Judge back-to-back every day.
Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Rizzo homered as the Yankees built a seven-run lead through six innings and beat the Blue Jays, 9-8, to improve to 7-2. Soto got his first two hits as a Yankee in the Bronx — RBI singles in the second and sixth — and Clarke Schmidt pitched capably enough for 4 1⁄3 innings. Soto also drew two walks, and he and Judge reached base a combined eight times.
“That’s a pretty good look to it,” Aaron Boone said of Soto and Judge. “That’s how you draw it up right there — our two big boys got us rolling out of the gate. It was good to see us pile on there early on. Hopefully this is something that will jump-start a few guys.”
The Yankees’ thinner bullpen did make things interesting in the final three innings as Toronto scored three in the seventh and three in the ninth.
After falling behind 9-2, the Blue Jays had the go-ahead run at the plate in the ninth, but with a man on first, Clay Holmes struck out George Springer on three pitches to end it.
After Justin Turner singled and Daniel Vogelbach walked to begin the ninth against Ian Hamilton, Ernie Clement hit a slow roller that Anthony Volpe was able to convert into a forceout at second only because the plodding Vogelbach was on first. Davis Schneider doubled to make it 9-6 and Hamilton was replaced by Holmes.
Alejandro Kirk’s groundout drove in a run and Cavan Biggio singled up the middle to draw the Blue Jays within 9-8, but Holmes got the dangerous Springer swinging for the third out.
The result was something of a balm to a disappointing home opener Friday in which the Yankees were shut out for the second time in three games and Soto slammed his bat and helmet in frustration. It did, however, highlight how much the Yankees lost when Jonathan Loaisiga announced earlier in the day that he’d be getting season-ending surgery. (As for the other two big injuries, we don’t expect to see Gerrit Cole until at least June and DJ LeMahieu has no timeline for a return, though he said he was encouraged by his recent progress.)
But despite very little going right on the injury front, Saturday’s production was pretty much how the Yankees drew it up in the offseason — though early on, a lot of that had to do with the curious downtick in Blue Jays starter Kevin Gausman’s velocity.
Soto and Judge teamed up in the first, with the former drawing a full-count walk and the latter golfing a splitter way below the strike zone 425 feet to left-center into the Blue Jays’ bullpen to put the Yankees up 2-0. Two batters later, Stanton went the other way on a 91.3- mph fastball, hitting a drive that tipped off a leaping Springer’s glove for a solo home run.
“He’s going to see about seven or eight pitches, he’s going to work the count, he’s going to put pressure on the pitcher, kind of show me what their game plan is for the night,” Judge said of hitting behind Soto. “I get a chance to sit behind him and watch him do his thing and I can go in there and fine-tune my approach before [my at-bat], and it always helps out.”
With Gausman struggling — and his fastball and splitter being thrown about 4 mph slower than average — the Yankees added three more runs in the second. Gleyber Torres nearly hit a grand slam, settling for a 400-foot sacrifice fly. Austin Wells scored on a passed ball and Soto’s seeing-eye single to right made it 6-0.
Rizzo blasted Mitch White’s 1-and-1 slider 365 feet to right to give the Yankees an 8-2 lead in the fifth. Soto’s two-out RBI single in the sixth made it 9-2.
The Blue Jays scored three runs against Luke Weaver in the seventh, on a homer by Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Vogelbach’s RBI double and Clement’s sacrifice fly, which made it 9-5.
“That’s what we want our game to be throughout the entire year,” Rizzo said of the offense. “To have that as our agenda of wearing pitchers out — it’s not always going to be an explosive offense, but if we grind out pitchers . . . we’ll be all right.”
Laura Albanese is a reporter, feature writer and columnist covering local professional sports teams; she began at Newsday in 2007 as an intern.
