Yankees

Judge Launches No. 14 as Yankees Crush Orioles in Sweep

By ••4 min read
Judge Launches No. 14 as Yankees Crush Orioles in Sweep

That is the part fans should lock in on after a 12-1 finish at Yankee Stadium. Judge did what Judge does, but the bigger story is how many different ways the Orioles got beaten.

The Yankees are 24-11 now, a season-high 13 games over .500. Baltimore is 15-20, riding a five-game skid, and sitting at its worst mark of the year at five under.

Make no mistake. Judge is a problem for everybody, but the Orioles made this way too easy on him and then had no answers for anybody else.

So no, this was not Judge dragging the Yankees across the line. This was Judge standing at the front while Baltimore kept proving it was not in the same class.

Judge exposed the mistake

Everybody will see the big league-leading 14th homer. Fine. But look at what it actually was: a hanging full-count knuckle-curve from Shane Baz, and Judge sent it to right-center in the first.

That swing put the Yankees up 2-0 after Trent Grisham had already doubled and crossed the plate. Against Judge, with traffic on, Baltimore gave him a pitch like that. Hold up. That is not dominance by one hitter. That is bad baseball by the team on the other side.

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Judge was not done, either. He finished 2-for-4 with two runs, four RBIs, a walk, and later added a two-run single in the eighth. He now has 91 career homers against the Orioles, with 53 of them coming in 124 games. At some point, that stops being random and starts looking like an organizational failure.

It was never just one bat

If you still want to frame this as Judge solo work, explain Grisham. He went 2-for-3, scored three times, drove in a run, and drew two walks.

Explain Cody Bellinger too. He only had one hit, but it was a two-run triple off Lou Trivino that helped turn the eighth inning into a demolition.

Here is the part that matters: the Yankees scored six runs in the eighth because Baltimore had no ability to stop the bleeding. Trivino made his Orioles debut and got tagged for six runs while recording only two outs. Judge got his numbers, yes, but the lineup kept forcing the issue because the Orioles kept cracking everywhere.

Baz and Trivino got boxed in

Baz did not get buried by one swing. He lasted 5.2 innings and gave up six runs, five earned, on five hits, with five walks and four strikeouts on 96 pitches. That line screams traffic, mistakes, and no control of the game.

The Yankees did not have to ambush him every inning. They just kept making him work, kept taking the free passes, and waited for Baltimore to hand them something hittable.

Then came Trivino, and whatever chance remained disappeared. When your debut turns into 0.2 innings and six runs allowed, that is not bad luck. That is a club getting overmatched by a better one that smells weakness immediately.

Schlittler changed the tone

Lost in the Judge noise is what Cam Schlittler did. He gave the Yankees 5.2 innings, allowed one run on seven hits, walked three, struck out four, and picked up his third straight win to move to 5-1.

The only run charged to him came when he forced in Colton Cowser with a bases-loaded walk in the sixth. Not clean, but hardly damaging in a game the Orioles never controlled for a second.

And the velocity matters. Schlittler threw 21 pitches at 100 mph or harder, which was 15 more than he had thrown combined in his previous 21 big league starts. That is not a throwaway detail. Baltimore was not just losing at the plate. It was getting shoved off its spots.

The gap is the real story

The Yankees have now won 14 of their last 16. The Orioles just got swept in four and outscored 39-10 in the series. That is the kind of gap fans should pay attention to, not just one highlight clip of Judge launching another ball into the night.

Yankees fans, do not cheapen this by calling it another Judge carry job. He was great, obviously. But this series was about lineup depth, a young starter with real life on the fastball, and an opponent that looked unprepared for all of it.

This was never really about whether Judge could beat Baltimore. We know that already. It was about whether Baltimore could prove it belonged on the same field right now. It did not

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