Aaron Judge kept up his bruising pace and hit his major league-leading 54th home run, connecting for the third straight day and sending the New York Yankees over the Minnesota Twins 5-2 on Monday.
Judge has homered in five of his last seven games for the AL East leaders. He snapped a 2-2 tie in the sixth inning when he hit a 3-1 slider from Trevor Megill (3-2) into the second deck in left.
The All-Star slugger reached 54 homers in his 131st game. He is on pace to hit 65 homers, four more than Roger Maris’ AL record in 1961. Judge reached 54 homers in New York’s 135th game; Maris hit his 54th when he connected off Washington’s Tom Cheney in New York’s 139th game on Sept. 6, 1961.
Judge, who also doubled, has scored five of New York’s last eight runs. He hit solo homers in the final two games at Tampa Bay, scored on a sacrifice fly by rookie Oswaldo Cabrera on Sunday and scored on a single by Josh Donaldson in the first on Monday.
Judge’s latest drive came after Gary Sánchez hit a 473-foot, two-run homer into the left field bleachers off Jameson Taillon in the fifth that tied it at 2.
Sánchez tied the game by hitting a 1-0 sinker for his 14th homer since the Yankees traded him along with Gio Urshela to Minnesota for Donaldson, Isiah Kiner-Falefa and Ben Rortvedt on March 13.
After connecting, Sánchez watched the ball soar into the stands, dropped his bat and ran around the bases as some of his teammates pounded on the dugout rail.
Marwin Gonzalez also homered for the Yankees, ending a 0-for-29 skid with his first hit since July 6. Kiner-Falefa added his second homer this year in the seventh.
Greg Weissert (2-0) pitched 1 1/3 innings for his second career win. The Long Island native worked around an error in the sixth and was replaced by Wandy Peralta after walking two in the seventh.
Peralta quickly finished the seventh by getting Jose Miranda to hit into a double play, with Gonzalez making a nice scoop at first of Donaldson’s throw, and then fanned two in the eighth.
Clay Holmes pitched a 1-2-3 ninth for his 19th save.
Judge scored when he doubled and scored on Donaldson’s single off the base of the left field wall. Judge scored just before Donaldson was tagged out at second after appearing to think he had homered.
New York went up 2-0 when Gonzalez hit a slider into the right field seats in the third.
