Yankees rout A's as Aaron Judge hits 54th homer

OAKLAND, Calif. — After the rock fight that was a 10-inning Yankees victory over the A’s on Friday night, things were far easier Saturday night.

And after a 10-0 victory at the Oakland Coliseum in which Anthony Volpe, Giancarlo Stanton and Aaron Judge homered and Carlos Rodon pitched an outstanding six  innings, the Yankees inched closer to clinching the AL East crown.

The Yankees (91-64), who had 14 hits in improving to 4-1 on this late-season West Coast trip, took a five-game lead over Baltimore (86-69) with seven games to play and trimmed their magic number for winning the division title to three (the Orioles lost to the Tigers in 10 innings earlier in the day).

Volpe, 9-for-56 (.161) in the month of September before getting three hits Friday night, went 1-for-4 with a walk and two RBIs, including his 12th homer. Stanton, struggling of late, cracked his 26th homer, a 441-foot three-run shot. Judge hit his MLB-leading 54th but only his third in his last 24 games. The 425-foot blast gave him a two-homer lead over the Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani.

Gleyber Torres led the way with three hits and Judge, Stanton, Juan Soto and Jon Berti each had two.

Rodon (16-9, 3.98 ERA) was the beneficiary of the offensive outburst, though the lefthander was super-sharp regardless. He experienced little trouble in his 90-pitch outing, allowing five hits and a walk. In his second-to-last start before the postseason, he improved to 2-0 with a 1.93 ERA in four September starts.

The Yankees gave Rodon the lead before he stepped on the mound, the start of a night in which they beat up on lefthander JP Sears, among the prospects they sent to Oakland at the trade deadline in 2022 in the ill-fated deal that landed Frankie Montas (as well as reliever Lou Trivino).

Torres led off with a single to center, Soto —  back in the starting lineup after banging his left knee Thursday afternoon in Seattle —  singled to center and Judge worked his MLB-leading 127th walk to load the bases. Stanton, in a 5-for-41 slide entering the day, hit into a 5-4-3 double play, but Torres scored to make it 1-0. Jasson Dominguez picked him up, lining an 0-and-2 pitch to left for an RBI single and a  2-0 lead.

Volpe, who had not homered since Aug. 3 against the Blue Jays, led off the second by rocketing a 1-and-2, 91-mph fastball 421 feet to left to make it 3-0.

Stanton more or less put it away in the third. Soto led off with a bloop single to left, Judge singled to right and Stanton annihilated a first-pitch changeup to leftfield for a 6-0 lead.

In the seventh, Judge hammered a first-pitch slider over the centerfield wall. Volpe added an RBI  groundout and Torres had a two-out, two-run single to make it 10-0.