Aaron Judge was used to the ribbing from Kyle Higashioka and Anthony Rizzo, a levity that has been missing of late as the New York Yankees sank from contention. They had three-homer games, and Judge had none.
“He would always remind me, every game I’d have two and I couldn’t get the third one: ‘Hey, one of these days, kid, you’ll join my club,'” Judge said with a smile.
He earned his membership Wednesday night at a most opportune time.
Judge homered three times and tied his career high with six RBIs, almost single-handedly snapping the Yankees’ first nine-game losing streak in 41 years with a 9-1 victory over the Washington Nationals.
“We’ve kind of been waiting for that for a long time,” Higashioka said. “Now we have nothing to hold over his head.”
Two hours after general manager Brian Cashman called the season “a disaster,” Judge drove a first-inning curveball from MacKenzie Gore to the opposite field over the Yankees’ bullpen in right-center. Judge opened a 6-0 lead in the second with his fifth career grand slam, a shot into the netting above Monument Park in center field.
“I left some pitches over the heart of the plate,” Gore said.
Then in the seventh, Judge combined with DJ LeMahieu for back-to-back homers against Jose A. Ferrer, popping the ball over the right-field short porch just inside the foul pole.
Judge became the third player in MLB history to hit three home runs in a win that snapped his team’s losing streak of at least nine games, joining Freddie Patek (1980) and Eddie Mathews (1952). He is also the first Yankees player with three home runs including a grand slam in a game since Alex Rodriguez on April 26, 2005.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone, who had a pair of three-homer games two decades ago, at first thought Judge accomplished the feat last season. Then the manager was corrected.
“So I had to welcome him to the club,” Boone said.
Judge is hitting .279 with 27 homers and 54 RBIs in 72 games. The reigning American League MVP, who had his 32nd multihomer game, entered in a 3-for-19 slide. He missed nearly eight weeks after spraining his right big toe against the Dodger Stadium fence June 3 and returned before the injury fully healed.
“That hurt us,” Boone said. “Obviously you understand the blow that that was for us.”
Last-place New York (61-65) had been within a loss of what would have been its first 10-game losing streak since 1913, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. Before Judge’s first homer, the Yankees had gone 61 innings without leading since Aug. 14 at Atlanta, the third-longest stretch in franchise history behind 63 from Aug. 16 to Aug. 23, 1906, and 62 from Sept. 25 to Oct. 1, 2000.
Luis Severino allowed one hit and matched a season high with 6⅔ innings, ending an 0-4 stretch since he beat Kansas City on July 23. Severino lowered his ERA from 7.98 to 7.26. Catcher Keibert Ruiz had Washington’s lone hit against Severino, lining a two-out single to right in the fourth.
Severino was given a big ovation when he left the mound.
“I’ve been getting a lot of boos, so it’s a good thing to have those fans cheering for me,” he said.
ESPN Stats & Information and The Associated Press contributed to this report.