OAKLAND, Calif. — In the Yankees’ final series at the Coliseum, they spent Saturday launching a few last souvenirs into the stands.
Aaron Judge, Giancarlo Stanton and Anthony Volpe all went yard with monster blasts that traveled a combined 1,287 feet to key an offensive outburst.
In a stadium that long doubled as a football field, the Yankees scored a touchdown and kicked a field goal as they inched closer to wrapping up the AL East with a 10-0 win over the A’s.
With the win, combined with the Orioles losing earlier on Saturday, the Yankees (91-64) regained a five-game lead atop the division with seven games to play and cut their magic number to clinch the AL East to three.
The Yankees’ 15th double-digit scoring game of the season was more than enough run support for Carlos Rodon, who navigated some traffic to toss six shutout innings.
The left-hander scattered five hits and one walk, continuing a solid run heading towards October while lowering his ERA to 3.98 in his 31st start of the year.
Judge’s home run was his 54th of the season, a 425-foot solo shot in the seventh inning that put the Yankees up 7-0.
Eleven years after he took batting practice with the Yankees at the Coliseum as a 21-year-old who had just become their first-round draft pick, Judge continued his historic season.
He joined Babe Ruth as only the second Yankee to record two seasons of at least 54 home runs.
The home runs from Volpe and Stanton, meanwhile, were encouraging signs for two of the team’s streakiest hitters. There is often no middle ground between hot and cold for the duo, but if the Yankees have the likes of Stanton and Volpe rolling at the same time, their lineup becomes that much deeper and more dangerous.
Entering this series, Volpe was just 5-for-44 (.114) with no extra-base hits over his last 13 games.
But he collected a three-hit night on Friday and then stayed hot on Saturday, crushing a 421-foot solo home run in the second inning – the longest of his career – for the 3-0 lead off former Yankees left-hander JP Sears. It marked Volpe’s first home run since Aug. 3, going 41 games without one.
Stanton had been equally cold of late.
After grounding into a double play in the first inning Saturday (which scored a run from third), he was 5-for-42, including six strikeouts in his last two games.
But in true Stanton fashion, he snapped out of the slump with a moonshot, clobbering a three-run shot 441 feet off Sears in the third inning to make it 6-0.
The Yankees gave Rodon a lead to work with from the get go, plating a pair of runs in the top of the first.
Singles by Gleyber Torres and Juan Soto were followed by a nine-pitch walk from Judge to load the bases for Stanton, who grounded into a double play that scored Torres from third.
Jasson Dominguez came up next and ripped a single through the left side to make it 2-0.
After Judge went deep off righty reliever Brandon Bielak to lead off the seventh, the Yankees piled on with three more runs to reach double digits. Volpe drove in one run on a fielder’s choice before Torres added a two-run single for the 10-0 lead.
Eight of the nine Yankees in the starting lineup recorded at least one hit while all of them reached base safely.
Mark Leiter Jr. relieved Rodon in the seventh and tossed two perfect innings with three strikeouts before Tim Mayza closed it out in the ninth.
