Aaron Judge blasts two homers as Yankees offense comes alive to pound A’s

What followed was a nearly picture-perfect sunny day for an offense that needed one on an afternoon that ensured those grins remained. 

One game does not end a slump — and the explosion included a somewhat modest nine knocks, the damage generally inflicted through extra-base hits with runners on base — but it sure will help the Yankees hitters feel better about themselves. 

“We don’t really push the panic button in here,” Aaron Judge said after the club’s four-homer, 12-5 demolition of old friend Luis Severino and the homeless A’s in front of 42,166 in The Bronx. “Maybe people on the outside do, that’s their job, but we just got to show up ready to work and ready to do our thing.” 

Cody Bellinger of the Yankees is greeted by Aaron Judge after he scores on his three-run homer during the fifth inning against the Athletics on Sunday, June 29, 2025, at Yankee Stadium in The Bronx, NY.

Yankees Marcus Stroman throws a pitch in the first inning against the Athletics at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, June 29, 2025, in Bronx, NY.

Jazz Chisholm Jr. (four RBIs in the second and third innings) did the early work. A previously slumping Judge blasted his 29th and 30th homers of the year, taking his share of the mid-game slack. Cody Bellinger helped out with a three-run blast, the trio tallying all of the RBIs for a group that had been desperate for signs of life. 

The offense of the Yankees (48-35) had been dreadful entering play, averaging 2.8 runs in its previous 16 games and held to three total runs in the first two contests of this series against a poor A’s staff. 

“You’re going to have little peaks and valleys here or there — last couple weeks have been a little tough for us,” manager Aaron Boone allowed after his lineup cracked double digits for a 12th time this season. 

Despite the funk, the Yankees still have won five of their past eight because their arms have often come through when their bats have not. 

Marcus Stroman returned successfully, keeping the A’s guessing through five innings of one-run pitching. After a poor beginning of the season, a knee injury and a suspect rehab assignment, Stroman looked like himself — not once hitting 91 mph but mixing in six distinct pitches and pitching to soft contact. 

As it turned out, Stroman was better than he needed to be, the offense not particularly balanced — Chisholm, Bellinger and Judge collecting all but two hits — but it was powerful. 

Aaron Judge of the Yankees hits a two-run homer in the fourth inning against the Athletics at Yankee Stadium, Sunday, June 29, 2025, in The Bronx, NY.

Chisholm started the party by driving in the game’s first four runs — the first on a first-pitch sinker from Severino in the second inning that he hooked into the right field seats, before clearing bases that had been loaded an inning later with a generously scored triple. He smacked a Severino changeup into right-center and watched it skip past center fielder Denzel Clarke. 

“That hit we’ve been looking for,” Boone said of a team that has struggled with runners in scoring position, “… and the guys were off and running from there.” 

Two Chisholm at-bats later, he unsuccessfully tried to check his swing on a strikeout and let go of the bat with his right hand, which remained suspended in the air as he walked to the dugout. But after what he called a “minor scare,” Chisholm — who returned from an oblique strain at the beginning of June — said he was fine. 

Aaron Judge of the Yankees reacts after he scores on his two-run homer during the seventh inning when the New York Yankees played the Athletics Sunday, June 29, 2025 at Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, NY.

By that point, the result was decided because Judge had demolished a two-run homer into the left field seats in the fourth and later smacked his 30th of the season, a no-doubter to left-center, to add more cushion in the seventh. 

Judge, who had been 8-for-40 in his previous 11 games, served as DH because his back was “a little banged up pregame,” he said. 

“I think that helped me out,” Judge said, perhaps borrowing from Chisholm’s 70 percent wisdom. “Just do a little less.” 

Bellinger — who has been one of the few productive bats in the order over the past few weeks — added to the rocket show with his own dinger in the fifth. 

“Sometimes you’re going to get beat up,” said Judge, who surpassed Lou Gehrig and moved into third in franchise history with his 44th career multihomer game. “Sometimes it’s not going to go your way. Just got to come the next day and just go to work.”