NEW YORK — As reporters asked various Yankees hitters whether they were into the torpedo bats some members of the team have been using, Aaron Judge questioned why he would bother.
“Why try to change something if you’ve got something that’s working?” the reigning American League MVP, fresh off the third three-homer game of his career, countered on Sunday morning.
Judge, using a traditional bat, then swatted his fourth home run in the last 24 hours in the first frame of Sunday’s series finale against Milwaukee. The two-run blast off Aaron Civale erased a 1-0 Brewers lead after Sal Frelick picked up an RBI single in the top of the inning.
It also kicked off another bludgeoning, as the Yankees won the game, 12-3, and swept the series.
Judge is now the first player in Yankees history to hit at least four homers in the team’s first three games of the season, per Stathead’s Katie Sharp. Judge also became the second player in MLB history with at least four homers and 11 RBI in his team’s first three games, per Sharp.
The other was Dolph Camilli of the 1935 Phillies.
“With Aaron, you never put a ceiling on what’s possible with what he can do,” Aaron Boone said afterward.
While the sample remains small, Judge now has a .545 and 2.461 OPS over three games after also homering three times on Sunday.
But when asked how he’s feeling at the plate, the right fielder replied, “We’re getting there.”
“Working on a couple things, and hopefully these things continue to give us good results,” Judge, who struggled early on in 2024, continued. “I wanted to try to have a better March and April than I did last season. So I did some stuff throughout spring training, but I think the biggest thing is just this offense. Every time I walk up, there’s guys on base.”
The Bombers, who hit a franchise record nine home runs in Saturday’s 20-9 win, kept the power surge going on Sunday.
Ben Rice added his first longball of the season in the second inning, a solo shot to the second deck in right. Jazz Chisholm Jr., a fan of the torpedo bats, then mashed a two-out, two-run homer.
Chisholm’s jack came after the Brewers issued an intentional walk to Judge. Civale had already gotten into a 3-0 count on the slugger.
The Yankees scored two more runs in the sixth inning thanks to a Jared Koenig wild pitch and an Austin Wells groundout. Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger plated two more runs with a single and a sac fly, respectively, in the seventh before Chisholm smoked his second homer of the game and third in two days.
This time, the second baseman launched a three-run homer. The bomb was the Yankees’ 15th home run of 2025, tying the major league record through the first three games of a season.
“We fired torpedoes all around the park, you feel me?” Chisholm said. “No pun intended.”
Milwaukee added to the board in the fourth inning when first baseman Jake Bauers, presumably fed up with watching his former teammates go yard, took Marcus Stroman deep for a two-run shot of his own. Once the game got away from Milwaukee, however, Bauers found himself pitching for the second straight day.
Stroman, making his first start of the season after an offseason of trade rumors, totaled 4 2/3 innings, five hits, three earned runs, one walk and three strikeouts over 81 pitches before turning the game over to the bullpen.
The Brewers also had eight hard-hit balls against the right-hander, but those hardly compared to the hurt the pinstripers put on Milwaukee.
“I don’t know if you guys watched, but if you did, the Yankees are good, and they kicked our ass,” Brewers manager Pat Murphy said.
With the season’s first series out of the way and the Yankees off to a 3-0 start, they’ll take a breather on Monday. A three-game set with the Diamondbacks begins in the Bronx on ...
