It’s time to stop worrying and love the bomb

“Ifeel sorry for the baseballs.”

— Giancarlo Stanton, YES Network, December 11, 2017

Six baseballs collected serious frequent-flyer points on a scorching Sunday night in The Bronx, courtesy of the 2018 New York Yankees. That Stanton, the first-year Yankee, did not contribute explicitly to this latest power display, settling merely for a single and a double that combined for 236 miles per hour in exit velocity — no vacation for those balls, either — reflects the depth and breadth of this team’s offensive attack.

The Yankees pummeled David Price and the rival Red Sox, 11-1, to prevail in this weekend Yankee Stadium series, 2-1, and tie the Sawx, technically, atop the American League East penthouse while taking a two-game lead in the loss column. They accomplished this via their favorite weapon, the home run, setting a season high by going deep the aforementioned six times — with the underrated, over-hated Aaron Hicks accounting for half of that total and producing a career night.

At the season’s halfway mark, the 54-27 Yankees have tallied 137 homers, putting them on pace to break the major league record of 264 held by the 1997 Mariners.

“That’s probably as good a night as we’ve had all year,” Aaron Boone said. “Just all night, a lot of different guys on a lot of different pitches. … Obviously a big series. To grab it on Sunday here, that’s a peek of what we can do when we’re really clicking. We just had a ton of great atbats.” The success of ace Luis Severino, who threw 6 2/3 shutout innings, might have warmed the Yankees’ hearts just as much, especially after Boston ace Chris Sale dominated their lineup in Saturday night’s middle game. Yet shame on you if you can’t marvel at what the Yankees are doing this season with their bats, or worse, if you buy into the nonsensical “They’re too reliant on the home run!” narrative.

“If you don’t homer, usually teams don’t score a lot of runs in those games,” said Boone, who became uncharacteristically animated when asked about this notion. “We have power. We’re going to hit the ball out of the ballpark. The idea is you want to create as much traffic as possible and give our guys a chance. A lot of times mistakes that we hit well get put in the seats. That’s just how we’re built. I think that’s a good thing.”

Only a troglodyte would disagree. This game served as a symphony of dingers. In addition to Hicks’ threepack — the first time a Yankees leadoff hitter accomplished that — Aaron Judge slugged his team-leading 22nd, rookie Gleyber Torres launched No. 15, becoming the first Yankee (and sixth player ever) to hit 15 homers in his first 60 career games at age 21 or younger, and rookie catcher Kyle Higashioka simultaneously tallied his first big-league hit and homer, ending an 0-for-22 start to his career and earning himself the dugout silent treatment from his teammates before they pounced on him in celebration.

“Awesome,” Torres said of the whole night. “We compete. [Saturday] night was a bad night, but today we focused.”

Boone will challenge you ardently if you profess concern that this sort of attack depreciates come October.

“Those Royals and Giants teams that won, go back and look at those games,” he said. “They stuck it in the seats and had great pitching. … When you’re up against a great team with great pitching, you’re going to get shut down. And it’s not because you didn’t hit a homer. It’s because great pitching shut you down. And it’s really hard against those guys to string together hits, three and four hits in an inning.”

Neither Boone’s sound logic nor Sunday night’s laser show takes away from the reality that the Yankees have a Sonny Gray problem, that they badly want another frontline starting pitcher to accompany Severino and might not be able to land one in this uninviting trade market. Yet it’s better to be making a run at homer history than not, isn’t it?

To those baseballs assigned to a Yankees game: Gear up. There are miles to go before you sleep.