DENVER -- If Friday night’s deflating loss to the team with the worst 50-game start to a season in the Modern Era (since 1900) could be likened to a bad dream, Saturday’s 13-1 Yankees rout of the Rockies at Coors Field was a satisfying return to reality.
Aaron Judge homered. Max Fried was brilliant. And all was right in the Bronx Bombers’ world as New York’s bats awakened from a two-game slumber going back to a 1-0 win over the Rangers in their series finale at Yankee Stadium.
Over the first four frames, it was more of the same for New York -- a one-man show courtesy of Judge, who launched a solo home run into the Rockies’ bullpen in right-center field in the first inning for his MLB-leading 18th of the season. It was also his second in as many days in his first taste of Coors Field in the regular season.
But after Colorado tied the game, 1-1, in the fourth, the floodgates opened. The Yankees sent 14 men to the plate in the fifth and scored 10 runs, the second time this season they’ve scored 10 in a single frame (also the seventh inning against the Padres on May 6).
For the fourth time this season, every batter in New York’s starting lineup had at least one hit. Paul Goldschmidt went 3-for-4 with three singles, while Cody Bellinger, Anthony Volpe, Jasson Domínguez, DJ LeMahieu and Austin Wells each had multiple hits.
But what manager Aaron Boone considered the “hit of the game” came from Oswald Peraza, who delivered a go-ahead RBI double in the fifth inning after Colorado scored in the fourth to tie the game.
“We had been struggling to get some offense going,” Boone said. “The double was big.”
As was Fried’s day on the mound. The left-hander continued his tremendous start to the 2025 campaign with 7 1/3 innings over which he yielded one run on six hits while walking one and striking out seven on 83 pitches. The performance kept his ERA right where it was when he took the mound: 1.29.
That is the lowest ERA by a Yankees pitcher over his first 11 starts of the season since earned runs became an official stat in 1913.
Not only that, it was the second time in Fried’s career that he had gone into the eighth inning at Coors and allowed no more than one run. He tossed eight scoreless frames here on June 3, 2022, while he was with the Braves.
In 29 career innings at Coors Field, the most hitter-friendly ballpark in the Majors, Fried’s ERA is 2.48.
It has truly been the land of the Fried.
“You know that the elements are different,” Fried said. “And for me, it’s more about making pitches and making sure that you’re executing those pitches. Because the ones that hang and the ones that are left over the plate can really beat you.”
There was no beating Fried on Saturday, even if you got a hit off him.
The slender lefty picked off two runners over the first three innings of the contest, giving him an MLB-leading six pickoffs on the season. His move to first is nearly indistinguishable from his move to the plate.
“It’s probably as good as I’ve seen,” Boone said. “Obviously, [in New York] we think about Andy [Pettitte] and his move. I grew up with Steve Carlton, who had a really good one. But, man. It’s a special move.”
And there was no beating the Yankees, who lead the American League in runs and lead MLB in home runs. For the most part, those went missing on Thursday and Friday.
But they returned midway through Saturday’s game, to the relief of the Yankees’ hitters.
“All of us were just kind of feeding off each other,” Judge said. “We were kind of waiting for that big inning since we’ve been here these two games. So it was good to finally get that big inning.”
Just when it looked like things were playing out as they did in Friday’s loss, when Colorado tied the game and later went ahead for good, the Yankees restored order in a big way with a big fifth.
“We were [upset] we gave up the lead there in the inning prior,” Judge said. “But the boys, they answered back.”