POWER OUTAGE?
In absence of right-handed sluggers Judge and Sanchez, Bombers blast 5 HRs
Aaron Judge walked over o home plate at Yankee Stadium on Thursday afternoon and pretended to hit before sprinting out of the box. It was just a running drill for Judge, because two weeks after he suffered a chip fracture on his right wrist, the Yankees slugger has not been pain-free enough to pick up a bat.
Judge can still only pretend to swing.
Thursday night, however, the Yankees showed why they can survive the next few weeks without two of their biggest right-handed bats. The Bombers hit five home runs — including two from Neil Walker and one each from Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Hicks and Miguel Andujar — as they beat the Rangers 7-3 in the first of a fourgame seri esat e ta um.
For the first time in his career, Walker went deep from both sides of the plate. It was his sixth career multihome run game and it comes at a time when the Yankees need other hitters to step up.
Judge and Gary Sanchez are on the disabled list as the Yankees have fallen eight games behind the Red Sox in the American League East and their focus now needs to be on trying to remain in the AL's top wild-card spot.
Initially, the Yankees reported that Judge could be back swinging in game situations three weeks after he was hit on the wrist by a 93 mile per
hour p tchfrom oya s pitcher Jakob Junis on July 26. They said he could be swinging a bat a week after the injury. Clearly that is not the case. “There is going to be discomfort for a while, it's still fractured,” Judge said after Thursday night's game. “We'll wait until it heals up moving forward with swinging and throwing.”
The fact that the Yankees' lineup got suddenly light on the right-handed side was a concern before the July 31 non-waiver trade deadline and had the Yankees kicking the tires on possible right-handed hitting outfielders as some insurance for this stretch.
ere are still some possible targets out there whom the Yankees could deal for before the Aug. 30 waiver trade deadline. Andrew McCutchen makes some sense, as does Jose Bautista. But a Yankees source said the team had no interest in Bautista.
And with the Bombers not facing a team currently over .500 until next month's trip out west to face off against the A's and Mariners, they clearly see how they can survive without going outside the organization.
The Yankees emphasized that with their 54th game of the season with more than one home run and the 20th time this season they had a player go
deep more than once.
Stanton, who has hit homers in three straight games now, hammered a 449-foot home run with a 121.7 mph exit velocity — the hardest hit ball since Statcast started keeping track in 2015.
Hicks, who can switch hit, punched a tworun homer into the second deck in right field in the first inning for his 20th homer of the season. With Stanton, Judge, Didi Gregorius and now Hicks, it is the first time in Yankee history they have four hitters with at least 20 home runs in a single season.
Walker hit his fifth and sixth of the season, showing that he can add some right-handed pop when needed. His first home run of the night, from the left-hand side, came right after Miguel Andujar hammed a two-run shot to left-center field.
The Yankees showed Thursday they can survive this schedule and give Judge and Sanchez a chance to get healthy.
The news on Sanchez, who is on the disabled list with a groin injury for the second time in the last three months, was a little more encouraging. He was scheduled to run on the field Thursday and continue working on his running in Tampa over the weekend. He is expected to join the team in New York on Sunday night to begin working on catching.
Manager Aaron Boone wasn't giving up on a quick return for Judge either.
“Because it's, ‘once the pain is out of there, it's go,' I believe it'll move fast from there, because he's been able to lift, he's been able to do all his conditioning,” Boone said. “We just gotta get to that point where the pain is all out of there at that end. Then he gets a bat in his hand and it progresses quickly from there.”
Against this upcoming schedule, the Yankees have enough to give them time to get healthy.