Judge Goes Deep Yanks Beat Max

 

By Andrew Rosario

 

The month of August that has been hell for the New York Yankees took a turn in the right direction Monday night when the Bombers hosted the New York Mets in the second part of the Subway Series. Coming off their Sunday win against the Toronto Blue Jays, New York faced arguably the best pitcher in baseball, Max Scherzer. Yankees manager Aaron Boone started Domingo German hoping to get solid innings against a team that came into the game with 79 wins. German did his job going 6.1 innings, 4 hits, 2 runs, 1 earned, striking out 3. Scherzer gave German credit for throwing the ball as well as he did. “It kept the pressure on me.”

 

The Yankees got out to a 3-0 lead as Andrew Benitendi went 2-3 and drove in 2 runs. Aaron Judge, who had not hit a home run since August 12th, took Scherez deep in the third inning for his 47th home run on the year. Said Scherzer of the home run, “I thought if I kept the ball down on Judge I could keep him in the ballpark, but he put a better swing on it.”

 

Said Judge of the blast, “that’s one of the reasons why I love this game, that little chess match you get to play. To have a future Hall of Famer that you get to do that with, it’s electric. You’ve got the crowd on your feet for every pitch right along with you. It’s fun. I’ll look back on moments like that.”

 

The Mets closed the gap to 3-2 after a Yankee defensive gaffe. Second baseman and rookie Oswaldo Cabrera back peddled on a fly ball to right field. He collided with Marwin Gonzalez as the ball popped out of his glove. Two pitches later, Daniel (Dough Boy) Vogelbach sent the German pitch in the right field bleachers. The Yankees added a run in the bottom of the 7th and then watched Rob Marinaccio and Jonathan Loaisiga throw 1.1 innings not giving up a hit.

 

Boone, who pounded the table after last Saturday’s loss, liked what he saw in the win. “What we’ve been through here the last few weeks, I’m excited to play well against really good opponents with really good pitchers on the mound. We’ve got a long way to go in this thing. If we play this brand of baseball, we’ll be in good shape.”

 

The Yankees had lost 14 of the last 18 games coming into the series. They hoped to keep the winning streak going when they face the Mets Tuesday night. After that, they go on a long road trip which begins with 4 games in Oakland, 3 games against the Angels and 3 games in Tampa.