WEST SACRAMENTO -- It didn’t take long for Yankees star Aaron Judge to realize Sutter Health Park is “a good place to hit.”
Judge came up just shy of two home runs in Friday’s series opener against the Athletics, settling instead for a booming double and a warning-track flyout. Still, he felt encouraged by the results.
“A couple balls had no business getting to the track like that, but they did,” Judge said after Friday’s win. “So I look forward to tomorrow.”
On Saturday, Judge showed exactly why he was excited to have another shot.
He reclaimed the outright Major League home run lead with No. 13, a fourth-inning solo dinger to right-center in the Yankees’ 11-7 loss to the A’s, then hit his 14th homer of 2025 in the sixth, a 433-foot solo blast to center.
"Once again putting out great swings like he always does,” said pitcher Carlos Rodón, who struck out 10 in six innings, allowing four runs to the A's. “Really good player.”
Judge is in the midst of what is on pace to be his best season ever and a historic offensive campaign. Through 39 games, he leads MLB in batting average (.396), on-base percentage (.486), slugging percentage (.772), hits (59) and RBIs (37).
His first dinger came off former Yankee JP Sears, against whom Judge had homered once in nine plate appearances entering the day. Almost casually, the slugger flicked a four-seam fastball over the low fence in right-center at 106 mph.
Even more impressive was Judge’s sixth-inning moonshot against Justin Sterner, a right-handed A’s reliever who entered Saturday’s game with 18 2/3 scoreless innings to start the season.
Four pitches later, Sterner officially had an ERA above zero. Judge teed off on a middle-in fastball, smacking it off the batter’s eye in dead center for a 433-foot blast.
It was the first of five runs the Yankees scored in the sixth against Sterner, briefly rallying from an early 4-0 deficit to take the lead before giving it back in the bottom of the seventh.
Oswald Peraza’s second homer of 2025, a two-run shot off Sterner down the left-field line, put the Yankees ahead. After the game, Peraza said through team interpreter Marlon Abreu that he helped build his confidence with the help of veteran teammates such as first baseman Paul Goldschmidt, outfielder Trent Grisham and -- who else? -- Judge.
"You look at his numbers over the years, he’s doing a lot of things right,” said Peraza, who praised Judge’s pregame preparation and his work in the batting cage. “If you can pick up on any of those good habits and implement that into your game, it’s going to be a plus.”
Judge’s two-homer showing, of course, wasn’t even the Yankees’ best power performance of the weekend so far: Jasson Domínguez’s three-homer game on Friday takes the cake there.
But the Sutter Health Park crowd was never more raucous than when Judge was at the plate, drawing cheers and chants of “M-V-P” from the Yankees faithful filling the ballpark’s green seats.
Judge, for his part, brought his own set of fans. Born in Sacramento and raised in Linden, Calif. -- an hour south -- he accommodated plenty of friends and family in box seats, making for “a lot of familiar faces in the crowd.”
Playing in West Sacramento, which is closer to Linden than the Bay Area, made it easier for Judge’s contingent to make it to the park. Avoiding the Bay Bridge and the heavy traffic in the region was also a plus -- not that it would have stopped them from going, though.
"Any time we play in California, they’ll show up anywhere,” Judge said Friday.
Just like Judge shows up whenever the Yankees and Athletics get together. He’s now a .303 hitter with 15 home runs and a 1.080 OPS in 41 career games against the A's -- gaudy numbers for pretty much anyone else, but nothing out of the ordinary for Judge.
Dating back to last September, Judge has now homered four times over his previous four games against the A’s, all out west.
As the slugger himself said, it “feels like home.”
"Any time we play the A’s, it’s just always something that’s familiar to me and close to home to me, so it’s special,” Judge said.