BRONX, NY — A little bit of this, a little bit of that…
Sunday afternoon at Yankee Stadium featured a little bit of everything: a one hour and 49-minute rain delay, a Juan Soto go-ahead home run prior to the rainfall, Aaron Judge getting intentionally walked three times, and to cap it all off, if that wasn’t enough between the Blue Jays and Yankees in their series finale — DJ LeMahieu hit a walk-off single in the 10th inning.
DJ LeMahieu walks it off for the Yanks, as New York beats Toronto, 4-3, in the series finale here at Yankee Stadium 🗽⚾️#Yankees #RepBX #MLB #LatinoSports pic.twitter.com/lmScj799pK
— Latino Sports (@LatinoSports) August 4, 2024
For LeMahieu, the 36-year-old recorded his fifth walk-off hit of his career, and finished the day, 1-4 at the plate with two RBI — one on a sacrifice fly in the sixth, and the other coming from his walk-off heroics, which marked the Yankees’ second walk-off hit this season, as New York improved to 4-6 in extra inning games.
Regarding the walk-off heroics and how he was feeling in that moment, an up-beat LeMahieu stated: “It was good, I think more of a relief than anything. But our guys came out with energy after that rain delay. More energy than I think we had in the first part of the game, so that was a big testament to our guys being locked in.”
On the opposing side, Toronto, an American League East division rival, remained ‘locked in’ on not allowing the Yankees’ captain in Judge, the frontrunner for this year’s AL MVP award, beat them. The Blue Jays opted to give Judge, who leads MLB this season in several offensive categories such as HR, RBI, and OPS, the ‘Barry Bonds treatment.’
Aaron Judge experienced the Barry Bonds treatment on Saturday and Sunday against the Blue Jays – Image Credit: Bill Menzel/Latino Sports
Three separate free passes to first base on Sunday, and another, yesterday, Saturday, August 3, in a Yanks’ 8-3 win. A testament to just how dominant Judge has consistently been in the batter’s box this season. 41 HR, and 103 HR, yet we are only in the first week of August…
And about the OPS, Judge is currently at 1.157 on the year, which makes him more than 100 points higher than the next slugger on MLB’s 2024 leaderboards.
2024 MLB Leaderboard in OPS
1. Aaron Judge: 1.157
2. Juan Soto: 1.035
3. Shohei Ohtani: 1.017
4. Rafael Devers: .989
5. Bobby Witt Jr.: .980
“He’s in a different category I think than anyone else in the league to where he can just flip the script of a game in one swing,” said Jays’ manager John Schneider when asked about facing Judge.
In this three-game series vs. Toronto, Judge recorded 2 HR, and 7 walks (4 Intentional) – Image Credit: Bill Menzel/Latino Sports
Now the question becomes, will more opposing ball clubs follow Toronto’s game plan and begin to hand Judge free passes at the plate rather than face him?
“Maybe, yeah. Everyone’s a little bit different… we’ll see,” Yankees’ skipper Aaron Boone explained. “I feel way better equipped from a lineup standpoint now to handle that, and deal with that, and make it hurt teams now.
And at the end of the day, you know if that’s happening, you got a better chance of continuing to turnover the lineup and bring Soto and bring Judge to the plate maybe one more time because those things are happening. So we’ll take the base runners and take our chances.”
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