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OAKLAND — Carlos Rodón leapt in the visitors’ dugout, an instinctual reaction to the cannon-fire echo from a baseball meeting the barrel of Giancarlo Stanton’s bat. Up and down the bench, the Yankees all knew it would be a home run. Still, they watched in stunned fascination, just to see where it would land.
Stanton’s mammoth three-run drive, a Statcast-projected 441-foot blast, broke open the contest on a night when the Bombers lived up to that musclebound nickname. Aaron Judge hit his Major League-leading 54th homer and Anthony Volpe also went deep, powering a 10-0 victory over the Athletics at the Oakland Coliseum.
“It’s fun to watch. You’re kind of a fan in the moment, even though I’m still pitching,” Rodón said. “Just a little fanboy watching those guys hit homers.”
Volpe cleared the left-center-field wall with a second-inning solo blast before Stanton rounded the bases in the third, highlighting a six-run pounding against former Yankee JP Sears. The Yankees have a commanding five-game lead over the Orioles in the American League East with seven regular-season games remaining.
“We’re in a great spot,” Stanton said. “The [magic] number is three now, so we’ve still got work to do, but we’re good for where we are.”
Yankees manager Aaron Boone said that Stanton “took the air out of the building with one of his Big G shots,” a drive that rocketed off his bat at 111.5 mph, coming to rest about 10 rows above the out-of-town scoreboard in left field.
Stanton said he felt extra motivation to come through after grounding into a bases-loaded double play in the first inning, a frame in which the Yankees pushed across two runs but could have had more.
“It’s always good,” Stanton said. “I wasn’t able to capitalize in a bigger spot before, so it was just good to be able to do it then.”
Rodón was the beneficiary of hearty run support, scattering five hits over six scoreless innings to pick up his team-leading 16th victory. Mixing his pitches well, Rodón matched his career high with 31 starts, improving to 2-0 with a 1.93 ERA across four starts this month (five earned runs, 23 1/3 innings).
“Offensively, we showed up again. That seems like it’s pretty common for when I’m pitching,” Rodón said. “It’s nice to have a good lead and just go out there to attack hitters and try to get some quick outs.”
Rodón followed a nine-inning gem from ace Gerrit Cole on Friday evening, with Yankees starters holding the Athletics to one run over 15 innings thus far. Boone said that the A’s “have really swung the bat well for the last couple of months, so to come in here and hold them down like that, it’s big.”
This represents a bittersweet final series at the Oakland Coliseum for Judge, a product of Linden, Calif., who attended games there as a kid and also experienced an on-field workout with the big league squad shortly after being selected in the 2013 MLB Draft.
On that day, Judge extended a hand to stars like CC Sabathia and Andy Pettitte in the visitors’ clubhouse, then was stunned when the veterans already knew his name.
“They were coming up to me saying, ‘Hey Aaron, how are you doing? Andy Pettitte. Great to meet you,’” Judge recalled. “I was like, ‘Andy, I know who you are. You don’t have to introduce yourself.’”
The A’s are playing their last homestand at the Coliseum before a temporary move to Sacramento from 2025-27. The team then plans to relocate to Las Vegas.
It was fitting that Judge homered in his final series at the Coliseum, a solo blast in the seventh inning that gave Judge a two-homer advantage over the Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani (52) for the big league lead.
Judge’s 54 homers are tied for the fifth-highest single-season total in franchise history, matching Babe Ruth (1920, ’28), Mickey Mantle (1961) and Alex Rodriguez (2007). The drive also equaled Judge’s 2022 total of 90 extra-base hits, securing his place as just the fifth player since 1950 to achieve the feat over multiple seasons.
“Health is everything,” Stanton said. “To be locked in on all cylinders and healthy, it’s important, especially at the biggest time of the year.”
Though Boone said he didn’t realize it until after the final out, the win represented his 600th as Yankees manager, making him the seventh skipper to reach that plateau in franchise history (600-425).
Boone joined Joe McCarthy (1,149), Joe Torre (1,173), Casey Stengel (1,149), Miller Huggins (1,067), Ralph Houk (944) and Joe Girardi (910).
“It’s the result of a lot of good teams, a lot of really good players and the opportunity to do it for an extended period of time,” Boone said.