Aaron Judge hit his 41st home run, leading the major leagues, and the New York Yankees defeated the Toronto Blue Jays 8-3 on Saturday.
“We’re watching greatness. So you try not to take that for granted,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “Try to appreciate every now and then what we have.”
Anthony Volpe and No. 9 batter Trent Grisham also hit two-run home runs off José Berríos, helping Carlos Rodón (12-7) earn his third win in a row after going 0-5 in his previous six starts.
Volpe and Austin Wells each had an RBI single for the Yankees, who started the day tied with Baltimore for the top spot in the AL East. They had their five-game winning streak ended on Friday night in the series opener.
New York had lost 16 of their last 22 home games for the first time since 1917. Yankees second baseman Gleyber Torres, who was benched for not running hard on Friday, was back in the lineup as Boone had promised.
Torres went 1 for 4 with a single and a walk. He made a headfirst slide to beat a tag at second base and scored on Volpe’s home run that made it 6-1 in the fifth inning.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit a solo home run in the first inning for Toronto and finished a triple shy of the cycle. He is batting .525 with nine home runs during a season-best 16-game hitting streak and has five homers in 12 games against the Yankees this season.
Juan Soto singled on a 3-0 pitch in the first inning, and Judge hit a 426-foot drive into the Blue Jays’ bullpen in left-center, giving him a major league-high 103 RBIs. “He’s the best hitter in the game,” Rodón said. “It’s a must-watch every at-bat.”
Judge also hit a two-run home run in the first inning on Friday and has six home runs in his last eight games. He’s hit 16 home runs in the first inning, tying Babe Ruth (1927) for the most by a Yankees player in one season — two behind the big league record set by Alex Rodríguez with Texas in 2001.
“It’s surreal. Anytime you hear any of those greats that are all around this building, all around this stadium, it’s almost kind of make-believe some of the stuff they did,” Judge said.
“So to be mentioned in any type of category, sentence, anything with those guys, it’s quite an honor.”
Before the game, Toronto manager John Schneider called Judge’s impressive stats “comical” and said it was “tempting” to walk him every time he came up to bat.
So with two outs and no one on base in the second inning, and his team trailing 4-1, Schneider did intentionally walk Judge, which drew boos from the crowd of 40,218.
According to Major League Baseball, this was the first time a hitter had been intentionally walked in the first two innings of a game since 1972.
“I honestly didn’t feel like seeing him swing. That was kind of it,” Schneider said. “He’s in a different category I think than anyone else in the league, where he can just flip the script of a game with one swing.”
In a similar situation in the fourth inning, Toronto pitched to Judge, and he struck out against Berríos (9-9). After second baseman Spencer Horwitz made an error on a leadoff grounder in the second inning, Grisham hit a home run to make it 4-1.
Rodón struck out eight in 5 1/3 innings while allowing just three hits, throwing 106 pitches on a 90-degree afternoon. “Just a steady mix,” he said. “Just trying to attack the zone.”
Alejandro Kirk hit a two-run single off Jake Cousins, but the Yankees’ bullpen held strong from then on. Clay Holmes struck out George Springer with the bases loaded for his 23rd save in 31 chances.
New York has scored at least five runs in eight consecutive games, its longest streak since September 2021. “I feel good about really every spot right now,” Boone said of his lineup. “The guys are contributing.”
Blue Jays pitcher Kevin Gausman, who started on Friday, was ejected by plate umpire Laz Diaz in the middle of the seventh inning for arguing balls and strikes from the bench.
