Aaron Judge had 42 home runs for the season and was one shy of No. 300 for his career entering the Yankees’ game against the woeful White Sox on Monday night at Guaranteed Rate Field.
Sox interim manager Grady Sizemore didn’t need to know that to form a plan for the Yankees giant.
“We’re going to be extremely careful,” he said. “That guy does a lot of damage.”
But fans buy tickets to see Judge hit.
“Yeah, I’m not worried about anyone else,” Sizemore said.
Fans instead had — to almost everyone’s surprise — tickets to see Sox season highs in runs, hits (18) and doubles (seven) in an improbable 12-2 win over Judge and the Yankees (70-50), who couldn’t capitalize on 11 walks, including seven by Ky Bush in his second start. The Yankees finished 2-for-18 with runners in scoring position.
Gavin Sheets had a career-high four hits and a career-high three doubles to go with four RBI. Korey Lee and rookie Brooks Baldwin homered.
And Sizemore got his first win as interim manager after two losses against the Cubs. Players doused him with beer, protein shakes, shaving cream, cereal, ketchup, baby powder and who knows what else.
“He’s probably taking three showers tonight, but I think he enjoyed every second of it,” Sheets said.
The Sox (29-91), who had lost 24 of their previous 25 games and were 1-20 since the All-Star break, remain on pace — at 122.8 — to break the 1962 Mets’ record of 120 losses.
Judge was 2-for-4 with an RBI double in the first inning and a walk.
But this was a rare night when the Sox’ lineup shined.
“They’ve been having great at-bats,” Sizemore said. “They’re battling, playing together, feeding off each other. They keep competing. I love the energy and effort I’m seeing out there.”
It was the Sox’ largest margin of victory over the Yankees since a 14-4 win in 2009.
“This is what the fans deserve,” Sheets said. “This is what we want to give them — a good, high-energy brand of baseball.”
‘Mental’ rest for slumping Robert
Luis Robert Jr., 3-for-38 over his last nine games, sat a day after Sunday’s day off.
“He had one [Sunday], but [this] is more of a mental day where he can come to the field and relax and not worry about his swing or competing,” Sizemore said. “Take a day to kind of decompress and piggyback off the off day.”
Funny how?
A video capturing Miguel Vargas in the dugout after the Sox’ 5-1 loss at Oakland last Monday, with Vargas looking dejected after the Sox tied the American League record of 21 consecutive losses, looked like the snapshot of a player traded from the division-leading Dodgers to the worst team in baseball.
“I don’t mean to laugh, but I feel so sad for him,” Dodgers pitcher Tyler Glasnow said of his former teammate.
Vargas, acquired in the three-team trade that sent Erick Fedde and Tommy Pham to the Cardinals and Michael Kopech to the Dodgers, saw the video and the reaction.
“I just lost a game and was thinking about the game and what I could have done better,” he said Monday. “I was there for a minute, and everybody was making a big thing about it. I’m sad whenever we lose. It is what it is.”
After playing every day after the trade and going 3-for-36 with a homer and a double, Vargas was out of the lineup Monday.