KANSAS CITY -- What Aaron Judge is doing right now is ridiculous -- and even his teammates know it.
A day after clobbering a 469-foot homer to uncharted territory atop the roof of the Royals’ Hall of Fame building, Judge mashed his 25th homer on a laser to right-center in the Yankees’ 6-3 win on Wednesday night at Kauffman Stadium. Judge is one long ball shy of matching the Mariners’ Cal Raleigh for the most in the Major Leagues.
The latest blast came with two strikes -- Judge's fifth two-strike homer this season -- and traveled a Statcast-projected 413 feet, just enough to get over the deep fences at The K. The ball left the bat at 108.8 mph, staying in the air for just 4.8 seconds.
Judge is batting an MLB-best .394 and leads the big leagues in on-base percentage (.490), slugging (.779), hits (98) and OPS (1.269). He has mashed a home run in three straight games and reached base in 54 straight road games -- tied for the fourth longest such streak by a Yankee, trailing only Babe Ruth (62), Derek Jeter (60, 54) and Lou Gehrig (60).
“I think it’s getting out of hand at this point,” said starter Clarke Schmidt, who dealt six scoreless frames in the win. “Every time he goes up there, he’s ready to do damage. Obviously, the average is what it is. If it’s not a homer, it’s probably a hit. It’s crazy impressive what he’s able to do.”
It is already the 16th time Judge has homered in three straight games during his 10-year big league career, and the first since Sept. 21-26, when he homered in a career-high-tying five straight contests.
Judge, who also walked Wednesday, is the third player since at least 1901 to reach base multiple times in 51 of his team’s first 66 games, also only done by Ruth (52, 1924, 1927; 51, 1923) and Gehrig (51, 1936).
After Tuesday’s win -- and a home run hit so far by Judge that manager Aaron Boone said he sat up to make sure he could watch every foot it traveled -- Boone joked Judge should be called up to the next league.
If there was one, even that may not be able to stop Judge at this point.