Yankees.com: Judge hits longest of year (473 feet!) in homestand full of deep drives

From David Adler:

The Yankees just got their first true Judgian blast of the season.

Aaron Judge crushed a 115.7 mph, 473-foot home run to deep, deep, deep center field at Yankee Stadium in Thursday’s series finale against the Astros — tied with Mike Trout for the longest homer of the 2024 season.

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“Not a lot of people go to that place,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “Other than a few guys we’ve got who are capable of doing that.”

The Yankees fell, 4-3, in the game, but they still put together a 5-1 homestand. They’re 25-14, with the most wins of any American League team, as they hit the road to face the Rays and Twins. And if Judge is finally starting to crush balls like that, those other teams are in trouble.

After winning the other six games of their season series against the Houston Astros, I guess I can live with one dud. And really, for a dud, this wasn’t all that bad. Four runs is obviously too much for a starting pitcher to give up, but, well, come on, it’s not THAT much. It’s not unreasonable to expect your team to score four runs of support for you, ya know? So I was actually somewhat impressed by Stroman’s ability to stop the bleeding, and the bullpen continues to be excellent.

The offense was disappointing, but what’s funny is that one of the most disappointing guys tonight was Judge, who then hit a MASSIVE home run that cut the lead down to one in the eighth inning. If there was a goat for the Yankees tonight, I’d say it might be Cashman for the fact that there isn’t a better pinch-hitting option against a tough lefty in the ninth inning with the tying run on second base and one out than Jose Trevino. In all seriousness, why is Jahmai Jones even on this team? Now that Berti’s back, they don’t need Jones as a super-sub, so why is he even HERE? Pick a shitty defender who can swing a bat off of the scrap heap. What the fuck is wrong with Brandon Belt? Is he a psycho or something? The dude had a 2.4 bWAR last year and no one will even give him a Minor League deal? You can’t have Brandon Belt on your bench as a pinch-hitter for the minimum? That would be a bad thing for some reason? When DJ comes back, Waldo can go to the minors. Jonathan Schoop? Plus, if you ARE going to have to use pinch-hitters, why not have TREVY bunt Gleyber to second, and then pinch hit Berti for Waldo? I guess Boone can share some of the blame with Cash, then.

I typically use the feature image to spotlight the Yankee most responsible for the loss, but, again, after a 5-1 homestand, and a 25-14 record, I’m feeling good enough that I’ll let Judge’s “Judgian” blast get the featured image.