Aaron Judge’s return from the injured list on Friday has raised the question about just how deep the Yankees’ lineup will be.
According to Chad Green, his buddies in the pitching fraternity are going to find out it won’t be much fun to navigate around Gary Sanchez, Giancarlo Stanton, Gleyber Torres, Edwin Encarnacion, DJ LeMahieu and Judge. And that’s before they get to Luke Voit and Didi Gregorius.
“It’s going to be a tough lineup to pitch against,’’ Green predicted after contributing two shutout innings at the start of a 10-6 win over the Astros in front of a soggy 41,030, who endured a 38-minute rain delay in the fourth inning Thursday night at Yankee Stadium.
That lineup has been without Judge since he suffered a left oblique injury on April 20, and it certainly didn’t miss the superstar right fielder when they put a hurting on five Astros hurlers.
Sanchez and Torres each homered for a second straight game, and LeMahieu and Encarnacion went deep to fuel the Yankees’ sixth straight win that temporarily stretched their AL East lead over the second-place Rays to four games and lead the Red Sox by seven lengths. It also halted the Astros’ winning streak over the Yankees this year at three.
“Guys swung the bats well, [but] we still don’t have guys going,’’ said Cameron Maybin, who added a two-run double in the fifth.
Never does a lineup have spots one through nine hot together, but Judge makes the Yankees as whole as they have been all year. Gregorius started the season on the IL. Stanton went down three games into the schedule. Miguel Andujar’s season ended May 12. Aaron Hicks’ season didn’t start until the middle of May. Judge has been missing for two months.
Not only did the Yankees survive the rash of injuries, they thrived. Now they get Judge back and plug him into the middle of the order to add more muscle.
“You saw it again tonight and there was a chance to have more. As a group they just make it really tough,’’ manager Aaron Boone said of his lineup. “The at-bat quality all night was there and made for some very difficult innings.’’
Across the first three frames, the Yankees had two base runners against Astros left-hander Framber Valdez. But Valdez was victimized in the fourth when Sanchez opened with a homer, Torres hit a three-run home run and LeMahieu added a two-run poke.
After the Astros scored on back-to-back homers by Jake Marisnick and Alex Bregman with two outs in the fifth, the Yankees matched that with two runs on Maybin’s double.
Leading, 8-3, the Yankees made it a seven-run advantage on Encarncacion’s two-run homer, hiking his AL-leading total to 23.
Brought into start the seventh with a 10-3 lead, David Hale gave up a run in the eighth and two in the ninth. When the Astros got two runners on base and the potential tying run on deck, Boone called for Aroldis Chapman. He got the final out for his 21st save in 23 chances.
Green has “started’’ six times, and the Yankees have won all of them. They will need to do it again on Tuesday against Toronto, and if Green is as good as he has been in the past three “starts,” the Yankees will be fine with it even if they don’t have Nestor Cortes Jr. to follow — he was optioned to Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre after the game to make room for Judge. In Green’s past three “starts,” the right-handed reliever has thrown six innings, given up three hits and fanned a dozen.
“I am used to it,’’ Green said of working the first two innings. “We will see if it continues.’’
What others will focus on starting Friday night is how much more power can Judge add to a lineup loaded with it already.