The Yankees beat the White Sox 10–2 to win the series
The Yankees beat the White Sox 10–2 on Wednesday and that series finale and series clinching game was highlighted by Aaron Judge hitting his 300th career home run.
Judge and Juan Soto are both having outstanding seasons. Judge is first in the American League in homers, OBP, SLG%, OPS, walks, WAR and total bases and OPS+. Soto is third in the American League in homers, third in the league in WAR and second in the AL in OBP, SLG%, OPS and walks.
Judge’s 300th homer, which came after Juan Soto was intentionally walked the batter before in the eighth inning, made him the fastest in MLB history to reach that milestone. He did it in just 955 games, which is 132 games faster than Ralph Kiner’s previous mark of 1,087 games to get to 300 career homers.
“I was mad about the intentional walk,” Judge said about Soto being intentionally walked. “So that kind of fueled it. Usually 3–0 I’ll take a pitch.”
Judge, who is 32, also reached 300 homers in the fewest number of at-bats, eclipsing Babe Ruth’s record. Judge reached 300 homers in 3,431 at-bats and Babe Ruth had the previous record as he got to 300 homers in 3,831 at-bats. Mark McGwire is now in third place with 3,837 at-bats to get to 300 career homers.
Judge hits a homer on average of about every three games in his career, which is remarkable. Judge, following Soto’s intentional walk, hit his first homer on 3–0 pitch since 2021 and this homer went into the bullpen.
Judge is on a four game hitting streak and in those four games he is an impressive 9–14 with two doubles, two homers, five RBI and five walks. In his 12 games in August, he has a remarkable .500 average (20–40) with a .643 OBP (he is getting on base in nearly two thirds of his at-bats), 11 runs scored, three doubles, four homers, 11 RBI and a 1.518 OPS.
He is on track to win his second MVP in three seasons and he is having an even better season than he did in 2022 when he set the AL record for homers. He has a better average (.333) than he had in 2022, a better OBP than 2022 (.467), a better OPS (1.174), a better OPS+ (224) and he has already tied the amount of doubles he hit in 2022 with 28. Judge is ahead in homers (43 homers in 120 games) and RBI by a good margin but Bobby Witt Jr. is preventing him from leading in all triple crown categories since his average is .349 and Judge’s average is still a very good .333.
Will Warren pitched well in this game for the Yankees allowing just two earned runs in five innings pitched with seven hits and zero walks allowed. This was a solid improvement since in his first MLB start on July 30, Warren allowed four earned runs with two walks in 5.1 innings and in his second start last week on August 7, he allowed eight earned runs with eight hits and three walks in 4.1 innings.
The only damage that was done against Warren in this game was by Gavin Sheets. Sheets had a solo homer in the second inning and an RBI single in the 4th inning. Those two runs were all the runs the White Sox would score. They went 1–6 with runners in scoring position in this game.
Sheets entered this series with a low and not productive .222 average and a .653 OPS in 104 games coming into this series but in this series 3-game series he went 7–13 with four doubles, one homer and six RBI, which raised his average up to .234 and his OPS up to .289. Sheets is in his fourth MLB season and is the son of Larry Sheets, who played eight MLB seasons and six of those game were with the Orioles.
The Yankees were an improved 5–11 with runners in scoring position in this game after going an inept 2–18 with runners in scoring position in the first game of the series when they lost 12–2 and 0–2 with runners in scoring position when they won 4–1 behind Soto’s three homers and four RBI.
Soto hit a homer in his first at-bat on Wednesday in the 10–2 win, which means that he homered in four consecutive at-bats going back to the previous game. Soto is the first Yankee to homer in four consecutive at-bats since Reggie Jackson in the 1977 World Series. This is when he got the nickname Mr. October.
Soto now has 194 career homers, which is the 8th-most before turning 26. For players before turning 26, he is only behind Jimmie Foxx (222 homers), Eddie Mathews (222), Alex Rodriguez (216), Mel Ott (211), Mickey Mantle (207), Albert Pujols (201) and Frank Robinson (200).
Soto had his 100th walk of the season in the 6th inning. He and Judge are the fastest duo on the same team to ever have 30 homers and 100 walks in a season. Judge and Soto both walked to start 6th inning. After the next two batters got out Trent Grisham walked on a 3–2 count with two outs. Anthony Volpe struck out swinging to end the 6th as the Yankees left the bases loaded in the sixth inning.
Going into the seventh inning it appeared the Yankees might lose the game to the team that is the worst team in MLB and on pace for the most losses in MLB history since the White Sox had a 2–1 lead. However, the Yankees would score nine runs combined in the seventh and eighth innings to win the game 10–2.
The Yankees needed the runs they scored in the seventh to take the load since it would have been very disappointing to lose the series against the White Sox, who have a 29–93 record. Their 29 wins are 15 wins fewer than the Rockies, who have the second worst record in MLB. Their -252 run differential is much worse than the Rockies, whose -197 run differential is the second worst in MLB. The White Sox are on pace to have more than 120 losses, which would be more than the 1962 Mets, who have the most losses in a season in MLB history.
The Yankees took momentum with a great hustle play by Oswaldo Cabrera, who will be playing more now with Jazz Chisholm unfortunately on the injured list.
Cabrera impressively scored from second on a sacrifice fly on Verdugo’s deep line drive that the fielder had to slid to catch. Luis Rojas had a good send as the third base coach and Cabrera saw that the outfielder had to slide towards the wall to make the catch. The all out hustle led to a very rarely seen runner from second scoring on a sacrifice fly. That hustle fired up the Yankees bench.
The previous player on the Yankees to score from second on a sacrifice fly was Jorge Posada on 8/19/00. Posada was not a fast runner and he was able to score since outfielder Ron Gant forgot how many outs there were. Cabrera went 2–5 with two runs scored and an RBI in this game and in his last 18 games he has a .327 average (18–55) with two doubles, three homers and nine RBI.
Austin Wells had a big 2-run single the other way with two strikes and two outs in the 7th inning to make the score 4–2. He has been very good as the cleanup hitter. Wells went 3–5 with three RBI and in his 11 games in August he has been on a tear and in the zone as he has an impressive .364 average (16–44) with three doubles, a homer, nine RBI and a .917 OPS.
Luis Rojas had a very good send with Cabrera and then with Judge, who scored on Wells’s single to make the score . Volpe had a much needed leadoff double to start the 8th inning. He had been really struggling since August 7. Before that double, going back to the first game of the double header on August 7, he was 1–32 in his previous 22 at-bats. Overall, in his 12 games in August, he has a .192 average (9–47) with 17 strikeouts and just three walks.
Cabrera singled to center to score Volpe and then Verdugo doubled to left to score Cabrera and make the score 6–2. Judge and Wells hit back-to-back homers in the 8th inning to increase the score from 6–2 to 10–2. Judge hit his 300th homer and then Wells hit a rocket 110 exit velocity that went 393 feet for his ninth homer of his season.
In Wells’s last his 19 games, he has a .360 average (27–75) with four doubles, one triple, three homers and 16 RBI. He has been the cleanup hitter for many of those games and he has really increased the team’s production out of the cleanup spot after they had previously gotten basically nothing out of that spot in the lineup.
The Yankees will now play a 3-game series against the Tigers, who are four games below .500 and have 30 more wins than the White Sox have.
