Yankees’ Aaron Judge looks to continue torrid play in opener vs. Mariners

Comparing Aaron Judge’s season to his contemporaries increasingly is becoming moot.

What he’s doing can only be judged, no pun intended, against history. He’s putting up numbers that haven’t been seen in decades.

Which doesn’t bode well for the suddenly struggling Seattle Mariners, who will host Judge and the New York Yankees in a three-game series starting Monday night.

Judge hit a two-run single in a five-run second inning against former teammate Luis Severino and added hits in his final three at-bats Sunday in a 12-2 victory against the Athletics. That effort raised his batting average to a major-league-leading .409. The last player to hit at least .400 for a full season was Boston’s Ted Williams in 1941 at .406.

Sunday’s performance came a day after Judge hit two home runs to take over the MLB lead with 14. And he also leads baseball with 39 RBIs.

“Any time we play the A’s, it’s just always something that’s familiar to me and close to home to me, so it’s special,” said Judge, who grew up about 50 miles from the Athletics’ temporary home in West Sacramento, Calif.

Judge is not only on pace to win just the second Triple Crown since 1967 (Carl Yastrzemski), but to join just four other players — Rogers Hornsby (1925), Lou Gehrig (1934), Williams (1942) and Mickey Mantle (1956) — in leading both leagues in all three categories since RBIs became an official statistic in 1920. And of that group, only Hornsby with the 1925 St. Louis Cardinals batted at least .400 (.403).

“You look at his numbers over the years, he’s doing a lot of things right,” teammate Oswald Peraza said of Judge.

So are the American League East-leading Yankees, who have won four of their past five games. Ben Rice overcame getting hit with a pair of pitches to launch a grand slam in the fifth inning Sunday.

“To see him get some big insurance runs right there to put the game out of reach, that kind of helped everybody relax and just do their thing,” Judge said of Rice. “It was a big swing for Benny and also a big swing for the team.”

The AL West-leading Mariners were swept in three-game weekend series by Toronto. Their 9-1 defeat on Sunday officially marked the first time the Mariners have been swept in a three-game series since April 4-6 versus San Francisco.

“Tough series for us, but one of those, you know, series that you kind of want to turn the page and move on,” Mariners manager Dan Wilson said.

The Mariners managed just four hits Sunday, two by J.P. Crawford, and got their lone run on a solo homer by Dylan Moore.

“You know, we didn’t get much going,” Wilson said. “We did hit some balls hard this series, where they were able to make some nice plays, and defensively they handled things. But again, one to move on from, and we start fresh tomorrow.”

Monday’s series opener is scheduled to feature a pair of right-handers in the Yankees’ Clarke Schmidt (0-1, 4.79 ERA) against the Mariners’ Emerson Hancock (1-1, 5.70).

Schmidt is 0-2 with a 1.73 ERA in three career meetings against Seattle, while Hancock will face the Yankees for the first time.

–Field Level Media