The Yankees are not acting like a team waiting around for Aaron Judge to come save them.
They are not limping through June. They are not surviving on one lucky swing a night. They are starting to look like a team that got punched in the face by the injury bug and decided to punch back harder.
Wednesday night in the Bronx was another one of those games.
The Yankees beat the White Sox 10-5 at Yankee Stadium, winning their fourth straight game and moving to 45-27. They also pushed their AL East lead to 3 1/2 games, matching their largest cushion of the season. For a team playing without Judge because of that fractured right rib, that is not just holding the line. That is taking the division by the throat anyway.
The night started with New York energy all over it. Knicks champions Jalen Brunson and Josh Hart were at the Stadium throwing out ceremonial first pitches, and the Yankees followed by giving the Bronx crowd exactly what it wanted. Not a tight, weird, sleepy game against a White Sox team that has been a pain lately. A real offensive night. Thirteen hits. Three homers. Ten runs. No defensive mess. Just business.
Cody Bellinger wasted no time making sure the White Sox knew what kind of night it was going to be.
After Amed Rosario doubled in the first inning, Bellinger jumped Anthony Kay for a two-run homer to right-center, giving the Yankees a 2-0 lead before Chicago could even settle into the game. Bellinger finished 3-for-4 with a walk, a double, a homer, two runs scored, and two RBI. He was a triple short of the cycle, and honestly, that is exactly the kind of game the Yankees need from him with Judge out.
Not cute production. Real production.
Bellinger has been one of the guys who had to carry more weight, and he looked like it Wednesday. First-inning homer. Third-inning double. Fifth-inning single to start the rally that cracked the game open. That is a complete night from a player the Yankees need to keep swinging like he understands the assignment.
The Bottom Of The Order Did Its Job Too
The Yankees did not win this game just because the big names showed up.
Anthony Volpe tripled in the second to drive in José Caballero, then Ali Sánchez followed with an RBI single to make it 4-0. Sánchez reached base three times and gave the Yankees something out of the catcher spot, which has basically been a dead zone for too much of the season.
When the Yankees are getting runs from Volpe, Sánchez, Caballero, and the lower part of the lineup, they become a different kind of problem. That is how you bury teams. That is how you avoid sitting around waiting for one superstar swing.
Caballero came up again in the fifth and delivered a two-run single after Bellinger and Jasson Domínguez reached to start the inning. That made it 6-3 and put pressure right back on Chicago after Colson Montgomery had dragged the White Sox back into the game with a three-run homer off Carlos Rodón in the third.
Then Paul Goldschmidt did what veteran hitters are supposed to do.
With two on and two outs in the fifth, Goldschmidt turned on Tyler Davis and sent a three-run shot into the right-field seats. Just like that, 6-3 became 9-3, and the game had that Bronx feeling again. The kind where the other team knows it missed its one real chance to make the Yankees uncomfortable.
Goldschmidt finished with two hits and three RBI. The homer was his 11th of the season, already passing last year’s total. He has now homered three times in four games, and the timing could not be better. The Yankees needed more thunder without Judge, and Goldschmidt is giving them old-man strength at the exact right time.
Gotta hit ’em with the Euro step when the @nyknicks are in the building 🏀🔥
Jazz Chisholm Jr. added the final Yankees homer in the seventh, his 10th of the season, making him the fifth Yankee to reach double digits. That is the stat right there. Five Yankees already in double-digit homers, even with Judge sidelined. That is how this offense keeps breathing.
Rodón Was Not Perfect, But He Got Through It
Carlos Rodón did not have some spotless revenge game against his former team, but he gave the Yankees five innings and kept the game in their hands.
Rodón allowed three runs on seven hits, struck out seven, and walked only one. The big mistake was the third-inning homer to Colson Montgomery, who had himself a night with two homers and four RBI. Montgomery cut the Yankees’ lead to 4-3 and made the game feel a little too close for a minute.
But Rodón did not fall apart. He finished five innings, got the win, and handed the ball to the bullpen with the Yankees back in control.
Paul Blackburn gave up one run over 2 1/3 innings, Brent Headrick cleaned up the eighth, and Jacob Bird allowed a solo homer in the ninth before closing it out.
The Yankees Are Sending A Message
The White Sox are not some automatic win. They came in fighting through a brutal stretch against the Phillies, Braves, Dodgers, and Yankees. They put up 11 hits. Montgomery hurt the Yankees twice. Sam Antonacci added a ninth-inning homer.
Still, Chicago lost its ninth straight game in the Bronx.
That says plenty.
The Yankees are 9-4 since losing Judge indefinitely. Read that again. The face of the franchise goes down, the lineup gets rearranged, and the Yankees respond by winning nine of thirteen and stretching their division lead.
That is not luck. That is depth showing up. Bellinger. Goldschmidt. Rice. Jazz. Caballero. Domínguez. Volpe. Even Sánchez getting in on it.
The Yankees have problems. They still need health. They still need Judge back. They still need to figure out how much they can trust certain spots on this roster over a long season.
But Wednesday night was not about panic.
It was about the Yankees looking across the field, seeing a team trying to hang around, and putting up a five-run fifth inning to end the conversation.
That is what first-place teams are supposed to do.
Born in Manhattan, New York, Felix Pantaleon is a Dominican-American digital content creator and the founder of NYYNEWS, one of the first and longest-running independent New York Yankees content creator platforms, active since 2005.
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