Aaron Judge was used to the joking by his teammates Kyle Higashioka and Anthony Rizzo, a levity that has been missing of late as the New York Yankees sank farther and farther from contention. They had three-homer games, and Judge had none.
“He would always remind me, every game I’d have two and I couldn’t get the third one: ‘Hey, one of these days, kid, you’ll join my club,'” Judge said with a smile.
He earned his stripes Wednesday night at a critical time in the game.
Judge homered three times and tied his career high with six RBIs, almost single-handedly putting the team on his back and snapping the Yankees’ first nine-game losing streak in 41 years with a 9-1 victory over the Washington Nationals.
“We’ve kind of been waiting for that for a long time,” Higashioka said. “Now we have nothing to hold over his head.”
Two hours after general manager Brian Cashman called the season “a disaster,” Judge drove a first-inning curveball from MacKenzie Gore to the opposite field over the Yankees’ bullpen in right-center field. Judge opened a 6-0 lead in the second with his fifth career grand slam, a shot into the netting above Monument Park in center field.
“I left some pitches over the heart of the plate,” Gore said.
Then in the seventh, Judge combined with DJ LeMahieu for back-to-back homers against Jose A. Ferrer, popping the ball over the right-field short porch just inside the foul pole.
Judge became the third player in MLB history to hit three home runs in a win that snapped his team’s losing streak of at least nine games, joining Freddie Patek (1980) and Eddie Mathews (1952). He is also the first Yankees player with three home runs including a grand slam in a game since Alex Rodriguez on April 26, 2005.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone, who had a pair of three-homer games himself, two decades ago, at first thought Judge accomplished the impressive feat last season. Then the manager was corrected.
“So, I had to welcome him to the club,” Boone said.
Judge is hitting .279 with 27 homers and 54 RBIs in 72 games. The reigning American League MVP, who had his 32nd multihomer game, entered the contest mired in a 3-for-19 slump. He missed nearly eight weeks after spraining his right big toe against the Dodger Stadium fence on June 3 and returned before the injury fully healed.
“That hurt us,” Boone said. “Obviously you understand the blow that that was for us.”
Last-place New York (61-65) had been within a loss of what would have been its first 10-game losing streak since 1913, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Before Judge’s first homer, the Yankees had gone 61 innings without leading since August 14 at Atlanta, the third-longest stretch in franchise history behind 63 from August 16 to August 23, 1906, and 62 from September 25 to October 1, 2000.
Luis Severino allowed one hit and matched a season high with 6⅔ innings of work, ending an 0-4 stretch since he beat the Kansas City Royals on July 23. Severino lowered his ERA from 7.98 to 7.26. Catcher Keibert Ruiz had Washington’s lone hit against Severino, lining a two-out single to right in the fourth.
Severino was given a big standing ovation when he left the mound.
“I’ve been getting a lot of boos, so it’s a good thing to have those fans cheering for me,” he said.
