Yankees: Aaron Judge hits the first half replay button with 2 HR’s, 6 RBI

The Yankees have been waiting patiently for the Big Guy to find his way again. Two home runs, three hits, no strikeouts, and six RBI reads the box score. 13-5 reads the scoreboard. Seven strong innings from their wobbly, but recharged, starter. And what do we have? We have a team on a roll again.

The Yankees wasted no time last night, effectively putting away the Baltimore Orioles with six runs in the first inning with the best yet to come, featuring a display of power only a team like the Yankees can muster.

Let the word go forth, Aaron Judge is back. THE Aaron Judge, you know, the one we remember from the first half of the season. He’s the same guy who had pitchers smirking, thinking they had him all figured out. Well, think again, because they need to go back to their drawing board, and they’d better do it quickly.

And it doesn’t matter that the Red Sox and Twins both won and the standings don’t change. It matters that the Yankees are taking care of their business, and they’re doing it decisively.

It’s the robust and steady play of a team firing on nearly all cylinders over their last twenty games that took the Yankees off life support to where they are now.

And it matters, even more, they’re doing it the Yankees way, with strong starting pitching at the top. Last night, the much-maligned, Masahiro Tanaka goes out there and serves up another, Hey, don’t forget about me” start with seven innings of two-run baseball, without his best stuff.

But then again, a veteran pitcher, like Tanaka, knows he doesn’t need his best stuff when his team is pounding out fourteen hits and scoring double-digit runs for him. And all he needs to do is throw strike one and record outs. Keeping the ball in play, even with eight hits against him, his telling stat of the night is that seventy percent of his pitches (102-74) were for strikes.

And so it is that the magic is back at Yankee Stadium, where fans can come to see their Yankees bomb the living daylights out of an opponent with four home runs that account for ten of the thirteen runs scored. Adding to Judge’s two, Todd Frazier and Gary Sanchez also joined the power party.

And if you miss the stats for a day or two now, it’s easy to overlook, for instance, that Judge now has 96 RBI and counting. Or that Sanchez stands at 31 home runs with 85 RBI, and counting. Or, that Frazier’s bat has produced 25 home runs.

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Still, it’s the robust and steady play of a team firing on nearly all cylinders over their last twenty games that took the Yankees off life support to where they are now. To be sure, the offense will occasionally come up with a real stinker on nights when all of their bats go silent, and they’ll drop another one-run game they should have won.

But as Joe Torre liked to say when he was managing “those” teams, you count ’em in fives. Meaning, your first goal is to get to five over (.500), then ten, then fifteen, and so on. And in doing so, the big picture into place by itself.

At one point in the season, the Yankees were eleven over (21-9). Following that splurge, they played sub-.500 baseball for three months. Now, they have climbed back and are fourteen games over .500, and you wouldn’t even notice it unless you were paying strict attention.

Next: Clint Frazier: The maturation of a young man

The smart take in baseball is to say the Cleveland Indians are the cream of this year’s crop. But those people also say, watch out for those Yankees, because they can create some real havoc in the crapshoot called the playoffs.

We’re watching, and we know they are right.