Aaron Judge followed up a 467-foot home run with three solid doubles, bringing in two runs for the New York Yankees in a 4-0 win over the Minnesota Twins on Wednesday night.
“You don’t even feel it when you get it on the barrel like that,” said a smiling Judge, who is 16 for 36 with eight walks over his last 10 games.
Marcus Stroman (3-2) pitched six scoreless innings for his first win in four starts, giving up only a double, a single, and three walks as the Yankees continued their long-standing dominance over the Twins.
Anthony Volpe had a sacrifice fly and Giancarlo Stanton added an RBI single for the Yankees (29-15), with Judge, Alex Verdugo, and Stanton collecting eight of their 13 hits in the third, fourth, and fifth spots.
The Yankees have outscored the Twins 9-1 and outhit them 26-11 in winning the first two games of the series, improving to 118-44 against them since 2002. That’s the best record by any major league club against any intra league opponent over that 23-season span.
The Yankees, who have won 10 of their last 13 games, improved to 30-15 at Target Field. That’s the highest winning percentage by any team to play a minimum of 15 games over the ballpark’s 15 seasons. Twins pitcher Pablo López (4-3) gave up a season-high 10 hits in 6 1/3 innings. He allowed three runs.
The powerful Yankees lineup made solid contact throughout the game, with Aaron Judge, a five-time All-Star and the 2022 American League MVP, delivering the most impressive blows. According to MLB’s Statcast data, Judge hit a total of 1,588 feet worth of fly balls in his first four at-bats.
Judge’s homer, his 11th of the season, soared into the third deck above left field off a first-pitch fastball.
“As soon as it was hit, myself included, it was like you want to get to a position where you don’t miss where it’s going to land,” said manager Aaron Boone, who watched Stanton run up the steps to see it. Judge, who ended the game with a perfect 4 for 4 at-bat record and a walk, hit the ball at 113 mph off the bat.
“It looked like a home run derby homer to me. I just turned around and saw the thing looked like that,” said López, forming a tiny circle with his thumb and index finger. “We don’t see many dudes that tall, so when you’re going up, you better get it, like, up, higher than high.”
