ROOKIE OF THE HALF-CENTURY
Yankee Aaron Judge launches two homers to reach 50 and smash Mark McGwire’s first-year record. Strikeouts? Who cares,
NEW YORK— Aaron Judge circled the bases for the 50th time this season, breaking Mark McGwire’s major league record for home runs by a rookie, and returned to the Yankees dugout to exchange handshakes, hugs and high-fives with excited teammates.
And then, he walked up the steps and back onto the field.
Embarrassed by the attention, he managed four short waves with his right hand before heading back to the bench just three seconds later.
“They kind of told me: ‘You got to go out there. You got to go out there,’ ” he would later recall. “First curtain call. I hope it was a good one.”
Judge had his second consecutive two-homer game in an 11-3 rout of Kansas City on Monday, with the Yankees’ 16th win in 22 games coming on a unseasonably warm autumn afternoon during a playoff push that earned no worse than a wild card.
The 6-foot-7, 25-year-old slugger tied McGwire’s 1987 mark with a two-run drive to right-centre off Jakob Junis (8-3) in the third inning that put New York ahead 3-0, driving a 93-mph high fastball 389 feet into the right-field seats.
Judge pulled a hanging changeup 408 feet for a against Trevor Cahill in the seventh for a 7-3 lead.
He was hitting .329 with 30 homers and 66 RBIs when he won the AllStar Home Run Derby.
But as if zapped by Kryptonite, Judge slumped to a .179 average with seven homers and 16 RBIs from the start of the second half through Aug. 31, a whiff-a-thon that included 67 strikeouts in 44 games.
Judge revived to hit .307 with 13 homers and 26 RBIs in a stunning September, leaving him with a .283 average, 108 RBIs, an AL-leading 120 walks and a big league-high 203 strikeouts.
“Everybody’s going say, oh, the strikeouts. But I think if I’m an owner or a GM, I’ll take 300 strikeouts with the year he’s putting up,” Yan- kees third baseman Todd Frazier said.
Judge got both home-run balls back and probably will give them to his parents. He joked about teammate Gary Sanchez following his recordsetter with a long ball.
“Maybe I should do that after every at-bat,” Judge said with a smirk, “just do a little quick curtain call before Gary hits.”