– by Adesina O. Koiki
A Lot of Sports Talk editor-in-chief
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NEW YORK — A disturbing pattern emerged early for the New York Yankees, as they allowed a run before their first turn at-bat on Saturday night, an occurrence that has usually led to the floodgates opening inside Yankee Stadium for all the wrong reasons.
Aaron Judge put a stop to all of those worries with his first swing, and the Yankees finally got back to winning ways.
Judge smacked his Major League-leading 28th home run of the season in the first inning, a two-run shot, as New York went on to secure an 8-3 win over Atlanta, snapping a three-game losing streak. Juan Soto, who scored on Judge’s home run, reached base four times on a single and three walks, and Oswaldo Cabrera provided a punch from the bottom of the order two hits and two runs batted in.
In each of the past three games, all defeats, New York had allowed at least one run in the first inning, and each of those games resulted in the opponent scoring at least seven runs in the contest — including Atlanta’s eight runs in an 8-1 drubbing last night. Marcell Ozuna extended that dubious stretch for New York after hitting a solo home run off Yankees starter Marcus Stroman with two outs in the opening frame to get Atlanta off to another quick start, as well as adding to the anxiety of Yankees supporters who had seen New York lose five of its last six and be outscored 51-23 in those contests.
Judge erased that deficit three batters into the first inning, as he crushed a 3-1 offering from Atlanta starter Charlie Morton into the right-field bleachers to put the Yankees ahead for good. In the month of June, Judge is batting .381 with a staggering 1.351 OPS, and has also produced 25 of his league-leading 70 RBI in the month.
“It’s just one game, but that’s what we’ve got to do,” Judge said. “Any time you hit a couple tough skids right there, you’ve got to understand it’s a long season but every game matters.”
Stroman settled down nicely after the rough start, pitching 6 2/3 innings and allowing three runs on just three hits, striking out six and walking two. New York’s bullpen combined to just allow one hit in 2 1/3 innings.
New York added single runs in the third and fourth innings, but lost slugger Giancarlo Stanton to injury after he limped around to score on a double from Gleyber Torres. The Yankees announced that Stanton was dealing with left hamstring tightness.
*Editor’s note: Above the byline is the photo gallery from Saturday evening’s game, with photos taken by ALOST staff photographer Chris Simon. After clicking on a photo to enlarge the picture, press the left and right arrow buttons on either side of the caption to scroll through the rest of the pictures that appear on the first page. Also, click on the numbers and/or arrow appearing immediately below the picture grid to load the next set of photos. There are 15 pictures in total.
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