Domingo German outpitches Max Scherzer as Yankees top Mets in Subway Series opener

The Yankees played one game on Monday night. But they picked up two wins.

They beat the Mets, 4-2, before a sellout crowd of 48,760 at Yankee Stadium as Domingo German outpitched Max Scherzer and Aaron Judge hit his 47th home run.

The other win? The Yankees will not have to face Jacob deGrom in Tuesday’s Subway Series finale. The Mets are giving their co-ace a few extra days of rest and will start Taijuan Walker instead.

The victory and the deGrom news had to be sweet music to the ears of Yankees fans, who knew how high a hill it would have been to climb to beat Scherzer and deGrom on consecutive days, especially with the way the Yankees have been playing of late.

But the Yankees built on the momentum from Sunday’s 4-2 win over the Blue Jays to beat their crosstown rivals for the first time this season. The Mets took both games at Citi Field last month.

“They’re a great ballclub over there,” Judge said. “Any time you come away with a win against a team like that, that’s big-time.”

The Yankees came into the game with a larger lead in their division than the Mets (eight games to four). But the Yankees had lost 14 of 18 and had played so poorly for so long that general manager Brian Cashman held a pregame news conference in which he felt the need to defend his team. “I believe in this group,” Cashman said.

The Yankees had to overcome an embarrassing error by rookie Oswaldo Cabrera, who started at second base for the first time in his big-league career (he already had started at third base, shortstop and rightfield).

German, who shook off a sixth-inning comebacker off his right calf, was cruising along with one out in the seventh when Pete Alonso hit a pop-up to short right. Cabrera went out and didn’t give ground as rightfielder Marwin Gonzalez came in, calling for the ball. The two collided and the ball clipped off Cabrera’s glove for an error.

The play evoked memories of Mets second baseman Luis Castillo dropping a potential game-ending pop-up in a 2009 Subway Series game at Yankee Stadium. Two runs scored and the Yankees won the game.

This time, Daniel Vogelbach followed the flub with a two-run homer to make it 3-2.

That was it for German (2-2, 3.89 ERA), who outdueled Scherzer by giving up two runs (one earned) in 6 1⁄3 innings. German allowed four hits, didn’t walk a batter and struck out three.

“Excelente,” Jonathan Loaisiga, who retired the final four batters for his first save, said in Spanish of German’s performance.

“That’s what we want from him,” Loaisiga said through an interpreter. “We wanted an outing like that.”

German opened the game by hitting Brandon Nimmo with a pitch but immediately got Starling Marte to bounce into a 5-4-3 double play.

Scherzer also hit the Yankees’ leadoff hitter, Andrew Benintendi, who moved to third on Anthony Rizzo’s single to left. DJ LeMahieu gave the Yankees a 1-0 lead with a sacrifice fly to right.

Judge made it 2-0 in the third by launching a 96-mph fastball into the rightfield stands for his 47th homer and first since Aug. 12. He had gone nine games without a home run and was 4-for-31 after his first-inning strikeout.

Someone asked Judge about breaking his “home run drought.”

“Home run drought?” he said. “That’s news to me.”

The Mets had two on with one out in the fourth when German got Alonso — who entered the game tied with Judge for the MLB RBI lead at 102 — to ground into an inning-ending 4-4-3 double play.

The Yankees tacked on another run in the fifth. Isiah Kiner-Falefa hit a ground-rule double on one hop into the visiting bullpen in left-center and scored when Benintendi grounded a double inside the first-base bag with the infield in.

After Vogelbach’s homer brought the Mets to within a run and activated the many visiting fans in the stands, rookie Ron Marinaccio got the final two outs of the seventh.

The Yankees made it 4-2 against Scherzer in the bottom half on Benintendi’s two-out RBI single. Scherzer (9-3, 2.33 ERA) departed after a single by Judge. The righthander allowed four runs and seven hits with one walk and only three strikeouts.

“Two things are going on at the same time,” Scherzer said. “Give credit to the Yankees for what they were able to do, but I can also look in the mirror and tell myself I can put the ball in better spots and execute better as well.”

By Anthony Rieber

anthony.rieber@newsday.comAnthonyRieber

Anthony Rieber covers baseball, as well as the NFL, NBA and NHL. He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since July 5, 2004.