Aaron Judge blasted his 50th and 51st home runs of the 2024 season, including the second of three straight home runs hit by the Yankees in the seventh inning alongside Juan Soto and Giancarlo Stanton, as New York defeated the Colorado Rockies on Sunday afternoon 10-3.
With 16 home runs in his last 27 games, Judge is firmly on pace for 63 home runs this season, which would break his American League record of 62 set just two years ago.
The victory gave the Yankees (77-54) a temporary one-game lead over the Orioles for first place in the American League East before Baltimore took on the Houston Astros on Sunday night.
Trailing 1-0 in the bottom of the first, Judge got down and sent an 0-2 Austin Gomber changeup 431 feet into the bullpen in left-center field to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead.
Judge’s seventh home run in his last seven games helped him reach a historic plateau, becoming just the fourth player in Major League Baseball history to hit 50 or more home runs in three or more seasons. Babe Ruth (four times), Mark McGwire (four times), Sammy Sosa (four times), and Alex Rodriguez (three times) are the only others to have done so. Judge, however, is the only player in MLB history to have recorded three 50-home-run years in his first nine MLB seasons.
With a 4-3 lead entering the bottom of the seventh, Juan Soto, Judge, and Giancarlo Stanton went back-to-back-to-back to break things open for the Yankees.
Soto pulled the first pitch he saw from Rockies reliever Jeff Criswell, a slider that sat middle-middle, 418 feet into the right-center-field bleachers for his 37th home run of the season. Just one pitch later, Judge smashed No. 51 on the season when he went the other way with a fastball that just snuck over the right-center-field wall and into the seats.
Just three pitches later, Stanton went 425 feet dead-center to give the Yankees a 7-3 lead. It was the fourth time this season that Judge, Soto, and Stanton homered in the same game and the sixth time that Judge and Soto went back-to-back.
While Judge went 2-for-4 with those two home runs and three RBI, Soto drove in two runs on the day — a second-inning RBI single giving the Yankees a 4-1 lead after Gleyber Torres put the Yankees up two with an RBI single of his own just moments earlier.
The Rockies scored one run in each of the fourth and fifth innings to pull within one against starter Marcus Stroman, who went five innings and allowed three runs on five hits with five strikeouts and three walks.
Torres poured it on in the bottom of the eighth with a three-run home run, ending his afternoon with four RBI.
The game was delayed for roughly 20 minutes in the bottom of the fifth inning after home-plate umpire Nick Mahrley was struck in the neck/throat area by the broken bat of Giancarlo Stanton during the Yankees slugger’s backswing. He was carted off the field and replaced by crew chief Marvin Hudson for the remainder of the afternoon.
