Aaron Judge entered Friday night’s 5-4 win over the Boston Red Sox on the back of the longest home run drought of his career. The New York Yankees slugger hadn’t hit a home run in his last 16 games.
Judge, however, picked the perfect time to launch his blackout and did so with maximum drama. The Yankees slugger hit a seventh-inning grand slam off Red Sox reliever Cam Booser for a 5-4 lead, rallying from a 4-0 deficit to start the inning.
Booser probably would have preferred to have that pitch back, launching a 96 mph four-seam fastball right down the middle of the plate. Judge didn’t miss, and that 16-game home run drought was long behind him.
Judge hit his final home run on August 25, when he hit his 50th and 51st of the season against the Colorado Rockies. At the time, he appeared to be on pace for his third career 60-homer season. With 14 games remaining in the regular season, 60 is still within reach. However, he is currently on pace to finish the season with 57 homers.
Judge went 2-for-4 on Friday, which might have snapped a September skid when he hit just .195 (8-for-41) with a .570 OPS. It was his worst month of the season since April, when he hit .207 with a .754 OPS.
With the win, the Yankees added one more game to their lead in first place over the Baltimore Orioles, who lost 1-0 to the Detroit Tigers — and got almost no hits — on Friday. New York now has a three-game lead over the Orioles and left the Red Sox five games out of the third AL wild-card playoff spot.
