Jazz Chisholm hits two of Yankees' four home runs to complete sweep of Brewers

Aaron Boone smiled late Sunday morning while discussing how his club could possibly follow its performance on Saturday afternoon, when the Yankees hit a franchise-record nine home runs.

“Yesterday was crazy,” Boone said. “Just one of those days.”

The Yankees didn’t have another one of those days Sunday — but the follow-up act wasn’t bad.

Hitting four more home runs — including two by Jazz Chisholm Jr. and a fourth in two days by Aaron Judge — the Yankees completed a season-opening three-game sweep of the Brewers with a 12-3 victory in front of 41.803 at the Stadium.

“I mean, we fired torpedoes all around the park,” Chisholm said with a laugh, a reference to the suddenly-all-the-rage “torpedo” bats the second baseman and four of his teammates are using. “We hit the ball around the park, we play defense, we do it all.”

The Juan Soto-less Yankees hit 15 homers in their first three games. That tied the MLB record set by the 2006 Tigers. The Yankees didn’t hit their 15th home run last season until their 13th game of the season on April 10.

“It feels like we’re playing Wiffle Ball out there a little bit,” Chisholm said.

Judge hit a two-run shot in the first inning against righthander Aaron Civale to quickly turn a 1-0 deficit into a 2-1 lead. Ben Rice homered into the second deck in rightfield in the second and Chisholm hit a two-run shot in the third to make it 5-1 following an intentional walk to Judge. His three-run blast inside the rightfield foul pole capped a five-run seventh, made the score 12-3 and gave him five RBIs.

That home run was the Yankees’ 13th in a 15-inning span dating to Saturday.

The Yankees had 11 hits, including three apiece by Chisholm and Paul Goldschmidt and two each by Rice and Oswaldo Cabrera.

“We’ve just been having a blast,” Rice, who added about 10 pounds of muscle in the offseason, said, pun unintended. “It seems everybody’s leaving the yard. It’s been exciting.”

Marcus Stroman, who entered spring training the sixth man in a five-man rotation but now is the No. 3 starter because of injuries, was decent, allowing three runs, five hits and a walk in 4 2⁄3 innings. Tim Hill, Mark Leiter Jr., Fernando Cruz and Ryan Yarbrough shut down the Brewers from there.

“I thought I threw the ball pretty well,” Stroman said. “Made a few bad pitches, but overall, for the first one, I thought it was OK. Definitely need to be better going forward, but to keep this offense in the game is definitely the key.”

The Yankees’ defense, a collective comedy troupe Saturday in a five-error performance, helped save Stroman in the first from what could have been a far rougher inning.

After Brice Turang led off with a sharp single to left, Jackson Chourio launched one to center. Cody Bellinger, on a sprint toward the wall, saved an extra-base hit and likely a run with an over-the-shoulder grab. Christian Yelich then lifted one toward the rightfield line, where Judge made a running catch.

Turang stole second, William Contreras walked and Sal Frelick smoked an RBI single to right to give the Brewers their first lead of the series. Stroman struck out former Yankee Jake Bauers, who later hit a two-run homer off the rightfield foul pole screen and much later ended up pitching a scoreless eighth inning (as he did Saturday).

The deficit didn’t last long as Goldschmidt singled and Judge blasted a 410-foot shot to leftfield. That made him 6-for-8 with four home runs, two doubles and 11 RBIs in an 11-inning span. He became the first Yankee and only the 13th player in MLB history to hit at least four homers in his team’s first three games.

The Yankees coasted from there, getting their season started about as well as they could have envisioned when spring training ended.

“A sweep going into an off day’s always a treat,” Boone said. “Look, I said it before Opening Day, it’s the week of overreaction, so it’s just three games. But you take wins when you can get them, because those don’t come off the board. There’s going to be moments when it’s a challenge and it’s tough, so any time you can sweep a team, especially a playoff-caliber team like the Brewers, to start the season, that’s always a good thing. But it’s also one series.”

Notes & quotes: Judge has a .545/.643/1.818 slash line and a 2.461 OPS . . . The Yankees scored in 11 of 16 innings in the final two days of the series, and Brewers outfielder-first baseman Bauers pitched two of the scoreless innings. He escaped a bases-loaded, one-out jam in the eighth Sunday, and his final pitch of the day was his fastest — 67.8 mph — as he retired Oswald Peraza, pinch hitting for Judge . . . According to YES, the 36 runs the Yankees scored was the third-most in MLB history for a team’s first three games behind the 1954 Cubs’ 41 and the 1978 Brewers’ 40 . . . The Yankees went 27-for-73 with 12 walks in the final two games of the series.

By Erik Boland

erik.boland@newsday.comeboland11

Erik Boland started in Newsday's sports department in 2002. He covered high school and college sports, then shifted to the Jets beat. He has covered the Yankees since 2009.