Judge indifferent about home run drought; Bullpen realignment pays off; Diagnosing Stanton’s latest slide; Field of Dreams Game remembered; Tyler Austin suffers freak injury Aaron Judge has been the best hitter in baseball over the course of the season, but even the biggest stars are prone to unproductive spells. He is currently in the middle of a 16-game homerless drought — the longest such streak of his career — and is 12-for-59 since his last long ball. Judge maintains the same even-keeled mentality as he has when he was crushing the ball and when he endured the month-long slump to start the season, reiterating that it’s just the ebb and flow of a long baseball season and that he’s feeling fine and confident that the results will return as they did when the calendar hit May.
New York Post | Mark W. Sanchez: The Yankees shuffled the back end of their bullpen and it paid off in the 4-3 walk-off win over the Royals on Wednesday. Rather than save Clay Holmes for the ninth in the closer role he’s played to inconsistent results, Aaron Boone deployed the righty in the seventh, instead relying on Jake Cousins and Luke Weaver for the highest leverage spots in the ninth, tenth, and eleventh. Weaver in particular has been the most impressive reliever out of the Yankees’ bullpen this season, and it appears the team is indeed uncommitted at the closer position and could opt for a “closer by committee” method for the rest of the season. Indeed, last night, Tommy Kahnle handled the ninth in a tie game at home (traditionally a closer’s spot), though Holmes did enter to get the final two outs of the 10th prior to Juan Soto’s own walk-off.
NJ Advance Media | Randy Miller: Giancarlo Stanton looked sharp after returning from a hamstring injury that cost him 46 games, slugging seven home runs with a 131 wRC+ in his first 26 games back, but has since started a 2-for-29 slide. When asked if he saw anything mechanically off, Aaron Boone demurred, stating that Stanton has just been a little off with his barrel on pitches he impacting consistently when coming off the IL. Boone said he thought Stanton was recognizing pitches well, but was hitting foul balls where he had been previously putting it into play with force.
SB Nation | Seth Rosenthal: The latest episode of the SBN series “Rewinder” focused on one of the most famous Yankees games of this decade. New York didn’t win this one, but no one will forget the “Field of Dreams” Game in Dyersville, IA. At least Judge and Stanton’s heroics are fun to remember, and the story of the game’s creation in the first place is worth remembering — some forget that it was meant to originally take place in 2020 rather than 2021 until the pandemic postponed it (among many things). Seth always does a great job with this series.
New York Post | Justin Tasch: Former Yankee Tyler Austin suffered an accident that just might be a first in the baseball world. Austin hurt his head changing his shirt in the dugout mid-game while playing for the Yokohama DeNA BayStars of NPB. The 33-year-old former Yankee farmhand has been playing in NPB since 2020 after stops with the Twins, Giants, and Brewers, and was hitting .318 with 22 home runs and 60 RBIs at the time of his injury.
