Judge hits 58th HR as Yankees beat Orioles to clinch AL East

NEW YORK —  Aaron Judge, spritz from white and gold bottles of Luc Belaire Rare Luxe sparkling wine dripping down his 6-foot-7 frame, appreciated the moment.

“Nothing is ever guaranteed,” the New York Yankees captain said.

Judge hit his major league-leading 58th home run, going deep for the fifth straight game to help the Yankees romp over the  Baltimore Orioles 10-1 on Thursday night and wrap up the AL East with three games to spare.

Quite different from 2023’s sputtering descent to an 82-80 record that nearly became the pinstripes’ first losing since 1992.

“Coming up short last year, it stings,” Judge said. “It hurts just like any other year that you don’t win a World Series, but that one hurt a little bit more. So we wanted to make a statement, come back here and put ourselves in a good position going into the postseason.”

After their 21st division title, including the first half of the 1981 split season, the Yankees (93-66) will open their 59th postseason at home Oct. 5 in a best-of-five Division Series against a winner of next week’s wild-card round.

Last year the Yankees missed the playoffs for the first time since 2016, when Judge made his big league debut in mid-August.

Judge, Juan Soto, Giancarlo Stanton and Gerrit Cole all know that Yankees are judged not by division titles but by World Series rings, like Yogi Berra’s 10, Joe DiMaggio’s nine and Derek Jeter’s five.

They wore T-shirts that blared in large letters: “We own the East” with “American League” in smaller type in the middle. But if they are to win their 28th World Series title and first since 2009, three more celebrations are needed.

Manager Aaron Boone curtailed his clubhouse postgame remarks.

“I said some things and then they just wanted to start spraying,” he recalled.

After a season of spurts and slumps, New York clinched no worse than a wild-card spot in Sept. 18 and celebrated with a booze-filled clubhouse bash in Seattle. The Yankees were 50-22 in mid-June, went 30-38 until early September and have won 13 of their last 19.

“You can’t you can’t take this for granted at all,” Stanton said. “It’s expected, for sure, but times like last year, it didn’t happen. So you got to appreciate it. We’re here now. Enjoy it. You never know if you ever get a chance at it again.”

New York arrived home this week needing one win to take the AL East crown but lost consecutive games to second-place Baltimore (88-71), putting the celebration on hold. The Yankees ended the Orioles’ one-year reign atop the division and left the Orioles with a wild-card berth,

“I don’t think we were the pick necessarily,” Boone said. “Understandable. What we came off of last year, we had a lot to prove.”

Judge increased his RBI total to 144, the most in the big leagues since Ryan Howard’s 146 in 2008. Stanton hit his 27th homer and had four RBI, and Cole pitched 6 2/3 innings of two-hit ball to outduel Corbin Burnes (15-9) in a matchup of Cy Young Award winners.

Cole, the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner, didn’t make his first start of the season until June 19 because of nerve irritation and edema in his throwing elbow that had sidelined him since spring training. He finished 8-5 with a 3.41 ERA.

“You just feel alive. It’s the best feeling. The stakes are high. The juices are flowing,” Cole said. “Last year was a humbling experience. It reminds you the game’s really hard, and this season was hard for us, as well, even though we clinched here with a few games to go.”

After Cedric Mullins hit a game-ending groundout to shortstop Anthony Volpe, who threw to first baseman Anthony Rizzo, the Yankees came out of the dugout and formed a brief jumping huddle between the mound and second base. Much of the crowd of 42,022 stood for a lengthy ovation.

Trying to hold off AL Central champion Cleveland for home-field advantage throughout the American League playoffs, the Yankees have a one-game lead and hold the tiebreaker over the Guardians (92-67).

“I start banging that desk from day one with our guys: `It’s coming for us. We think we’re going to go do special things this year but along the way, even in a great season and what we hope is ends with the championship, we’re going to face moments of truth. We’re going to face adversity. We’re going to face tough times. We got to be prepared to handle that,'” Boone said. “We’ve had a lot of gut-check moments, a tough loss or a tough stretch, and these guys have really just kind of stayed the course.”