Angering the MVP favorite is not a sound strategy.
Aaron Judge said he was “mad” before his 300th career homer Wednesday night after the White Sox walked Juan Soto to face him in the Yankees’ 10-2 road win.
Judge made them pay with a three-run blast that made him the fastest player to ever tally 300 homers in MLB history, in terms of both games and at-bats.
“I was mad about the intentional walk,” Judge told YES after hitting his 43rd long ball of the season. “So, that kind of fueled it. Usually 3-0, I’ll take a pitch, see a pitch. Kind of pass it on to the next guy. In that situation, if they want to pitch to you, you have to come through.”
Judge has become used to being walked since teams would rather let Austin Wells or that day’s cleanup hitter beat them, but the White Sox tried a bold strategy that certainly did not pay off for them.
With the Yankees leading, 6-2, in the eighth and a runner on second base with one out, Chicago decided to walk Soto and allow righty Chad Kuhl to face Judge.
White Sox interim manager Grady Sizemore cited the four homers Soto had hit spanning the last two games, including one Wednesday, as the reason for the questionable strategy.
“It’s pick your poison,” Sizemore said. “I’m not trying to get to Judge. I got a base open, he’s had four homers on us. There’s no solution or easy way out of that jam, but Soto has definitely been the hotter of those two bats, even though Judge has been hot too. Again, we were kind of playing the situation there. We were already in trouble, had the base open, just trying to get out of it anyway we could.”
The White Sox did not get out of that jam as Judge swung at an inside 3-0 sinker that would have been ball four and swatted a majestic three-run bomb to left that turned what had been a tight game into a laugher.
Judge tallied his 300th homer in his 955th game and 3,431st at-bat, passing Ralph Kiner for the fewest games and fellow Yankees legend Babe Ruth for the fewest at-bats.
He finished 2-for-3 and drove in three runs, giving him a league-best 110 RBIs.
“It’s a great achievement,” Judge said of reaching the milestone. “I’ve been in the game a little while now I guess — we still got a long way to go — but like I said a couple days ago, I was hoping it’d come in a win. It came in a big win for us. We were down for a little bit and couldn’t get much going. So, I was just excited it was in a big moment.”