MLB
It was as if Aaron Judge were trying to show he can do everything, too.
Sure, Shohei Ohtani can hit and pitch. But Judge, the AL home run king, can blast homers with his bat, steal them with whatever hand he has free and play Gold Glove defense in center field.
What began as a game between the Yankees and Angels morphed into a faceoff between two of the most spectacular players MLB has to offer.
With his own two-way brilliance Judge won — with some help from Gleyber Torres and the club’s pitching — as the Yankees survived, 3-2, in 10 innings on a chilly Wednesday night in front of 38,131 in The Bronx.
The Yankees walked it off in the 10th, when they loaded the bases against Matt Moore on a ghost runner (Isiah Kiner-Falefa), a walk (from Judge) and a hit-by-pitch (from Anthony Rizzo), before Torres lifted a sacrifice fly to end it.
The Angels had tied it in the eighth, when former Yankee Gio Urshela stroked an RBI single against Wandy Peralta. But that would be the only run the bullpen allowed in 5 ²/₃ innings.
The Yankees survived because Clay Holmes got through a shaky ninth — by striking out Mike Trout with two Angels on base, first-base umpire Will Little ruling Trout went around on a check-swing, which prompted Angels manager Phil Nevin to get tossed — and Ian Hamilton pitched an excellent 10th inning, when he stranded the ghost runner by inducing two ground outs and a fly out.
The Yankees survived because one team had Judge — who smacked a two-run home run and saved two runs with a pair of remarkable plays — and the other team did not.
To say Judge lifted the Yankees (11-7) single-handedly would be incorrect. He needed a second hand.
Two batters into the game, Ohtani blasted a middle-of-the-plate changeup from Jhony Brito that seemed destined to wind up in Monument Park. The 411-foot shot to dead center was over the wall when Judge brought it back.
Taking advantage of every bit of his 6 feet and 7 inches, Judge rose and used the heel of his glove to ricochet the ball back toward the field. With the same hand-eye coordination that helps Judge at the plate, he landed and used his bare, right hand to stab the ball before it hit the ground for one of the more remarkable outs of the season.
“If I was a good outfielder, I would have caught it on the first try,” Judge said with a smile.
“He got up there pretty good and then played a little volleyball with it,” manager Aaron Boone said, before addressing Judge’s defense as a whole. “It’s one of the reasons he’s great. He takes pride in every little thing in this game.”
Another reason he is great arose in the bottom of the first inning, when Judge smacked a pitch far enough to ensure no Angels outfielder could deliver retribution.
After Anthony Volpe singled, Judge crushed a full-count four-seamer from Griffin Canning. The 412-foot shot to left was his sixth in 18 games — Judge had four through the same span during last year’s 62-homer tear — and put the Yankees up 2-0.
“Judgie was a plus-three there in the first inning,” Boone said after a game in which the Yankees never trailed but consistently found themselves in danger. Judge was usually there to bail them out.
After Urshela’s eighth-inning single, Brandon Drury lined what appeared to be a gapper into right-center. With two outs and Urshela on the move, Judge sprinted to his left and laid out for another run-saving catch, this time with a dive that kept the game tied entering the bottom of the eighth.
“You just gotta be an all-around athlete,” Judge said, who is playing center most days because Harrison Bader is hurt. “You gotta be an all-around player.”
The Yankees’ defense and pitching frustrated the Angels, who went 1-for-15 with runners in scoring position. Included were a pair of strikeouts from Ohtani, once against Peralta in the seventh and once against Michael King in the fifth. Jhony Brito (4 ¹/₃ innings, one run) pitched in and out of trouble, notably striking out Trout with Zach Neto on third to end the top of the third.
Game 2 went to Judge. Ohtani had smashed his fourth homer of the season in Tuesday’s Angels win, which makes Thursday a rubber game for both the clubs and the very early front-runners for AL MVP.
“It was amazing,” Torres said of Judge’s juggling act. “He made it look really easy, but it’s so difficult.”
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