Yankees minor league affiliates playing meaningful baseball and winning titles as usual

This past Friday the 13th weekend was lucky for the Yankees organization in many ways: Aaron Judge broke out of his 16-game home run funk with a grand slam in the bottom of the seventh to drive the big league club to a 5-4, come-from-behind win over the Red Sox.

On Sunday it was a Judge two-run, 445-foot blast — his league leading 53rd home run — that helped the Yankees win 5-2 to take three-of-four from the Red Sox at home, and give Carlos Rodón his career-high 15th win of the season.

New York now has a three-game lead on Baltimore in the AL East with 12 games to play, and Judge continues flirting with history: he’s reached base 300 times this year, the most by a Yankee in the team's first 150 games since Mickey Mantle (319 in 1957), and his 132 RBI are a career high.

And there's more good news down on the farm, where the Yankees' minor-league affiliates are in the mix for the postseason.

Hudson Valley Renegades High-A Playoffs

In Greensboro, North Carolina on Friday, New York’s High-A affiliate, the Hudson Valley Renegades were crowned champions of the South Atlantic North Division for the second straight year, taking down the Pittsburgh Pirates’ affiliated Greensboro Grasshoppers, 4-1 in a winner-take-all Game 3.

The ‘Gades have now reached the league championship series five times in the last eight seasons, and are looking for their first South Atlantic League Championship in franchise history.

They lost Game 1 of the Championship series 5-1 on Sunday against the Tampa Bay Rays’ High-A affiliate, the Bowling Green Hot Rods, in Bowling Green, Kentucky and now face an elimination game.

Games 2 and 3 (if necessary) in the best-of-three championship series are at home on Tuesday and Wednesday at Heritage Financial Park in Wappingers Falls, NY, which is less than two hours north of Grand Central on the Metro-North Hudson line to Beacon, or up the NYS Thruway to exit 17 at Newburgh and over the Hudson River on the Newburgh Beacon Bridge along I-84.

Somerset Patriots Double-A Playoffs

In Double-A, the Somerset Patriots won 5-1 over Blue Jays’ affiliate New Hampshire at TD Bank Ballpark in Bridgewater, NJ on Sunday to clinch the Eastern League’s Northeast Division 2nd-half title in the final game of the regular season. Somerset was six games out of first place as recently as Aug. 18. They host the Hartford Yard Goats in Game 1 of the Divisional Series at 6:35 p.m. ET on Tuesday at TD Bank Ballpark.

Stellar starting pitching helped the Patriots go 22-8 in their final 30 games of the season, led by Yankees’ No. 17 prospect Zach Messinger. In his nine starts since the All-Star break, the tall 6-foot-6 righty went 5-1 with a 1.50 ERA, 1.02 WHIP and .182 BAA over 54 innings pitched. He ranks second in the Eastern League with a 3.06 ERA while leading the league with 150 innings pitched.

On Sunday, Patriots pitchers led by Yankees No. 28 prospect Trystan Vrieling fanned 12 Fisher Cats, a second straight double-digit strikeout game and sixth time doing that in their last nine games. Vrieling posted his Eastern League leading 13th win of the season, and went 6-0 with a 2.23 ERA over his last 40 1/3 regular season innings. No. 2 prospect Spencer Jones went 2-for-4 with a leadoff homer to open the scoring, and his 17 home runs are a new career high to lead Patriots batters this season.

Over the final three games of the weekend, Patriots pitchers allowed only one earned run over 27 innings for a 0.33 ERA, with 35 strikeouts and an opponents’ batting average of .149. In the regular season's final 30 games, Somerset’s pitching staff had an Eastern League-best 2.57 ERA and Double-A-best 0.99 WHIP.

SWB RailRiders Triple-A Playoffs

And not to be outdone by their younger colleagues, the Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre RailRiders beat the Philadelphia Phillies’ affiliate Lehigh Valley IronPigs 6-5 Friday night at PNC Field in Pennsylvania with a Ben Rice bases-loaded, walk-off walk in the 11th inning. They won again Saturday, 10-1, on the back of two more Rice home runs, before completing a weekend sweep of the IronPigs by a score of 5-4 on Sunday.

The RailRiders took five of seven from the IronPigs in their final homestand and have won five in a row going into the year's final six regular season games at Buffalo. The RailRaiders have won seven of their last 10 games and are tied atop the International League standings with the Boston Red Sox’s affiliate Worcester Red Sox with six games left to play in the second half. Saturday’s game featured a Jasson Domínguez bobblehead giveaway even though The Martian is up with the big league club.

It’s great to see the future of the Yankees organization looking so bright, with three of their four minor league affiliates still playing meaningful baseball in September; only the Single-A Tampa Tarpons are done.

Top prospects are performing well under pressure and playing at a championship level, which bodes well for the future of the franchise. And all of this on a successful Friday the 13th weekend, which apparently was a good omen for New York.