BAT’S INCREDIBLE
Yanks pound O’s behind mammoth Judge HRs for straight victory
After dropping a one-run game to the Red Sox on Tuesday, the Yankees’ lead in the AL East fell to one game, with Boston and Baltimore seemingly closing in fast.
Instead, the Yankees unleashed five straight smackdowns of their two rivals, culminating on Sunday in a 14-3 demolition of the Orioles in The Bronx. The O’s are suddenly 6 1/2 games out; the Red Sox are four games out after falling to the Tigers on Sunday night.
The Yankees hit four more homers against the hapless Baltimore pitching staff, including two more by Aaron Judge, who is running roughshod over the American League.
His 495-foot blast in the sixth was the first to clear the bleachers in left-center and was the longest in the majors this season. It was the longest at the Stadium since Statcast started measuring homers in 2015. Later, he hit his 21st of the season, the most in baseball.
But Judge was hardly alone, as the entire offense showed how dangerous it can be on a sweltering day at Yankee Stadium, with summer approaching fast.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like this before,” Starlin Cas- tro said of the Yankees outscoring opponents 55-9 over their last five games.
“It’s unbelievable,’’ added Castro, who homered for a third game in a row. “We showed a lot of people how good we can be and how good we are now. If everyone stays healthy, who knows what we’re going to be able to do?”
It’s hard to imagine it would be more devastating than this, as they’ve scored eight or more runs in five consecutive games for the first time since 1956. In their last two wins over Balti- more, they scored 30 runs.
And on a day when Joe Girardi was forced to use five pitchers because the team decided to push the struggling Masahiro Tanaka’s start to Monday in Anaheim, it hardly mattered who was on the mound for the Yankees.
Now they’ll see if they can keep this hot streak going when they begin a seven-game West Coast trip against the Angels and A’s.
“[Monday] is a new day,’’ the manager said. “This just means that guys are swinging the bats well. And it lets teams know we can score runs in bunches.”
After pounding the Orioles with six runs in the first Saturday, the Yankees lit up Baltimore starter Kevin Gausman for five runs in the first Sunday in front of another sell-out crowd.
The first three batters, Brett Gardner, Aaron Hicks and Judge all jumped on the first pitch before Castro delivered a two-run single to open the scoring. Gary Sanchez followed with a three-run blast to left-center that was measured at 450 feet. It was Sanchez’s 10th homer of the season — and fourth since moving into the six spot in the lineup.
Chad Green, who started and was slated to throw about 50 pitches, retired six of the f irst seven batters he faced, but got to a full count on five different batters to drive up his pitch count.
He was yanked after back-toback doubles to open the third. Chasen Shreve came on and gave up two more RBI doubles and suddenly it was a two-run game.
Shreve got Adam Jones on a comebacker before Mark Trumbo struck out — after Girardi questioned home-plate umpire Alan Porter’s call that Trumbo tipped the ball and it hit the dirt.
The lefty then fanned Chris Davis to finally end the inning — and the offense went back to work.
The Yankees tacked on two more in the fourth on Matt Holliday’s single before homers by Judge and Castro in the sixth ended the drama.
Hicks added a two-RBI double in the seventh before Judge hit what initially looked to be a line drive to second that somehow reached the seats in right.
In the end, the Yankees finished a key 13-game stretch against divisional opponents 8-5 and comfortably in first place.
“It’s huge but we want more,” Judge said of the team’s recent success.