CHICAGO — Giancarlo Stanton thinks it’s fun to watch. In the hole behind Anthony Rizzo on deck, the slugger watches as opposing pitchers have to face Aaron Judge.
“It’s awesome to watch. I get the second best view of it, Rizzo gets the best. Yeah, it’s fun to watch. It’s fun to watch them try to get him out,” Stanton said with a smile. “And as he wears them down I hope we get a mistake.”
Thursday night it was a lot of fun for Judge, Stanton and the Yankees as they rallied for seven runs in the eighth inning and beat up the White Sox pitchers for a 15-7 win at Guaranteed Rate Field.
It was no fun for the White Sox pitchers that gave up two homers to Stanton, who had a career-high six RBI, and Judge, who went 2-for-4 with a monstrous 456-foot home run and four RBI.
It was the 21st time since they’ve been teammates that Stanton and Judge have homered in the same game and that is usually a pretty good sign. With that the Yankees won their fourth straight game, scoring a season-high 15 runs on a season-high 15 hits.
They scored eight of those runs after the White Sox tied the game at 7-7 in the seventh inning on a three-run bomb from Yoan Moncada off Jonathan Loaisiga.
That shows this team’s sense of purpose and desire, Judge said.
“It’s something we’ve been doing all year,” Judge said. “It just speaks volumes to the type of guys we have in this clubhouse. It doesn’t matter what the score is, it doesn’t matter if we’re down, it doesn’t matter if we’re up. We were up and we’re still getting guys on base guys. We’re still having great at-bats. … So I think it just speaks volumes to the guys we got in here and we want to win.”
And it shows that the Yankees have the guys in the lineup to do that.
Stanton had his 35th multi-home run game of his career, his first of the season. Seven of those home runs have either tied or given the Yankees a lead in games, which is the most in the big leagues.
Judge hit his major league-leading 11th home run of the season in the seventh. He drove in four runs Thursday with a sacrifice fly in the ninth. Over his last 15 games, Judge has gone 20-for-61 with eight home runs and 21 RBI.
Two of those RBI came in the eighth on a hit less majestic than his homer. After White Sox reliever Joe Kelly walked the bases loaded with two outs, the 6-7 outfielder sprinted up the first-base line to beat out a groundball to shortstop, allowing Marwin Gonzalez and Gleyber Torres, who came off the bench to work a walk in a tough at-bat, to score. Stanton followed with a two-run-single and Josh Donaldson wrapped up the inning with a three-run homer.
But as Judge said, the Yankees weren’t throwing away at-bats and tacked one on in the ninth on Judge’s sacrifice fly.
“We’ve talked about winning in different ways and finding ways to win and tonight was a little bit different,” manager Aaron Boone said. “We gave up some runs and kept pouring it on. So just a great job on the offense.”
They had to pick up the pitching, which had been the foundation of the Yankees’ early-season success. Thursday night, it wasn’t as sharp.
Loaisiga has struggled this season and Thursday night, that became an issue. The homer he gave up to Moncada was the third he allowed in 13.2 innings pitched this season, which tied the total he allowed in 70.2 innings last season.
Luis Gil, making a spot start for the Yankees, who were in a crunch playing 23 games in 22 days, allowed four runs on five hits. He walked two and struck out five over four innings of work.
This was the night the offense had to step up and for Stanton, it was fun. For the White Sox pitchers, not so much.
“I think they got a lot of professional hitters obviously. They have a gameplan. They put up a lot of good at-bats,” White Sox starter Dylan Cease said after giving up six runs over four innings. “Sometimes you just have to tip your cap.”
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