AARON Judge smacked his major league-leading 37th home run, Jose Trevino had the first four-hit game of his career and Nestor Cortes pitched six scoreless innings in the New York Yankees’ 6-0 victory over the host Baltimore Orioles on Sunday.
Judge went 2-for-4 with two RBIs, two runs and a walk for the Yankees, who took two of the three games from the upstart Orioles. Baltimore has dropped four of its past six games.
After DJ LeMahieu gave the Yankees a 1-0 lead with an RBI double that scored Trevino with two outs in the third, Judge blasted Dean Kremer’s curveball 456 feet over the left field fence to extend the advantage to 3-0.
That’s all Cortes (8-3) needed, as the left-hander allowed just one Oriole to reach third base. He yielded just six hits and no walks with seven strikeouts before Clarke Schmidt relieved him to open the bottom half of the seventh.
The Yankees extended their lead in the sixth. After Kremer opened the frame by hitting Anthony Rizzo with a pitch and getting Gleyber Torres to fly out to right, he was relieved by Keegan Akin.
Akin gave up a single to Matt Carpenter and struck out Aaron Hicks before faltering, allowing a run-scoring single to Isiah Kiner-Falefa that scored Rizzo. Trevino followed with a double to right to plate Carpenter for a 5-0 lead.
Kremer (3-2) allowed four runs on five hits with a walk and six strikeouts in 5 1/3 innings.
Hicks capped the scoring in the ninth, when his single to center scored Judge.
Schmidt allowed just two hits to go along with three strikeouts and two walks over the final three innings to pick up his first save of the season.
Trevino, who played in his first All-Star Game last week, went 4-for-4 with an RBI and a run for the Yankees, who also got a pair of hits from Hicks and Torres.
Adley Rutschman and Tyler Nevin each had two hits for the Orioles.
Judge, the major league leader in home runs and RBIs, had a monster series against the Orioles, going 8-for-13 with eight RBIs, three home runs, two doubles and four runs.
Judge has hit four home runs in the Yankees’ five games since the All-Star break. — Reuters