NEW YORK — If the Yankees are going to continue relying on home runs as their main run producer, it’s a sound strategy to get two of them from their best player in one game.
Aaron Judge went the opposite way for both of his home runs in Friday night’s 4-1 win over the Cleveland Guardians. While both of Judge’s homers were absolutely smoked — each one traveled at 112 miles per hour — the second of the pair was a classic Yankee Stadium homer. With a 19-degree launch angle, the line drive over the right-field short porch is probably a double in every other stadium. But for a team that’s already feeling the pressure of an underwhelming start, they’ll take any good fortune they can get.
That extends to the pitching rubber as well, where the Yankees got Jameson Taillon’s best start of the young season. Taillon threw the most pitches of any of his three starts thus far, getting pulled after 84. That likely signals that he’s all the way ramped up after the short spring training limited pitchers’ workloads across the league’s first few games.
