Aaron Judge's home run in eighth gives Yankees series win over the Mariners
SEATTLE — It was in 2017 in this very ballpark — now called T-Mobile Park but eight years ago called Safeco Field — that a veteran Yankees reliever uttered a forever line regarding then-rookie Aaron Judge.
“It’s not fair,” David Robertson said. “It’s like he’s playing on a Little League field.”
Robertson and his teammates had just seen Judge, en route to a 52-homer season, nearly hit one completely out of Safeco in July of that 2017 season, the fifth-inning moonshot landing in the second deck’s third-to-last row.
Wednesday afternoon Judge again made the ballpark, never considered a hitter’s haven since it opened in 1999, look small.
Leading off the eighth inning with the score tied and righty reliever Carlos Vargas on the mound, Judge dinged the scoreboard in left-center with a rising liner that left his bat at 117.7 mph, obliterating a hanging slider for his MLB-leading 15th homer and leading the Yankees to a 3-2 victory over the Mariners.
“That ball was hit really heavy,” Aaron Boone said. “I told him, ‘That’s the ball I hit that one-hops to the wall.’ And his just keeps ascending. That ball was covered.”
Judge crushed the 1-and-1 pitch 444 feet and had his dugout in awe, as it has been for the entirety of the season.
The reigning AL MVP, went 2-for-4 to improve his batting average to .412 and OPS to 1.279. Judge leads the majors in just about every offensive category of significance — including the aforementioned — as well as RBIs (41).
Judge, after singling in the first, struck out in the third and sixth innings. He looked particularly bad in the sixth, going down on four pitches — the first one a changeup and the final three sliders.
“They were kind of just feeding me with sliders and off-speeds all series long,” Judge said of what he was looking for in the eighth. “I really wasn’t disciplined on a lot of them, so I was really just trying to lock on something out over the plate I could handle.”
The Yankees (25-18) went 4-2 on this trip that started with two wins in three tries against the A’s in West Sacramento. The Yankees, who have won 13 of their last 14 series against the Mariners (23-19) in this stadium, trailed 2-0 entering the sixth before getting consecutive doubles by Anthony Volpe and Jasson Dominguez. The Yankees tied it an inning later on a pinch-hit homer by Paul Goldschmidt, just the second of the 37-year-old’s career.
The previous one came nearly 14 years earlier, on Aug. 11, 2011, while Goldschmidt was a member of the Diamondbacks in a game against the Astros, when Houston was still in the National League.
“After I hit it, I was like, ‘Man, I don’t think I’ve had one since then,’ ” Goldschmidt said with a smile. “It was kind of cool.”
Both starting pitchers threw well. Will Warren, with his four-seamer, sinker and curveball all plus pitches in the outing, made it two straight standout starts. The righthander, who internally in the organization is increasingly drawing comparisons to a young Michael King, struck out five of the first six batters he faced. He allowed two runs, three hits and one walk over five innings in which he struck out a career-high nine.
Warren is starting to look the part of a young pitcher in the beginning stages of figuring it out at this level. “I had a good feel for it today,” Warren said of his curveball.
The Yankees again received good work from the bullpen as Tyler Matzek, Ian Hamilton and Fernando Cruz got the ball to Luke Weaver. The latter, called on despite throwing two innings the night before, struck out the side for his fourth save in five chances.
Cabrera update
Utility man Oswaldo Cabrera, who suffered a broken left ankle in the ninth inning here Monday night and had to be taken off the field in an ambulance and flew back to New York Tuesday, underwent an MRI on Wednesday morning and was seen by an orthopedic specialist, Boone said before Wednesday afternoon’s game. The manager said Cabrera was scheduled to seek the opinion of multiple doctors, the primary determination being whether or not surgery will be needed.
Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.
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