SEATTLE — Aaron Judge capped New York’s early offensive outburst against Seattle All-Star Yusei Kikuchi with his 20th home run of the season, and the Yankees held on for a 5-4 win over the Mariners on Wednesday night.
For the second straight game, the Yankees scored a flurry of runs in the first two innings, but this time had to withstand Seattle’s late rally.
Judge’s two-run homer was clubbed into the second deck of the left field seats and gave New York a 5-1 lead. Luke Voit had a two-out RBI single in the first inning and Gleyber Torres followed with a two-run single as the Yankees scored three in the first inning for the second straight game.
Kikuchi (6-4) struggled badly in his first start since becoming an All-Star for the first time. His fastball velocity was down and both his cutter and slider caught too much of the plate early in the game.
The result was a lot of loud contact from the Yankees that Kikuchi was fortunate didn’t result in more runs. Kikuchi allowed a season-high five runs and eight hits and settled down later in his outing to retire the final seven batters and get through five innings.
Domingo Germán was originally slated to start for the Yankees, but underwent an emergency root canal on Wednesday morning and was scratched from starting. Nick Nelson started and failed to make it out of the first inning thanks to three walks, a hit batter and a wild pitch that plated a run for Seattle.
Luis Cessa (2-1) threw 3.1 solid innings after Nelson and Germán felt well enough to throw three innings out of the bullpen. He struck out five, but also gave up Tom Murphy’s three-run homer in the sixth inning. All three runs were unearned after Gio Urshela’s error to begin the inning.
10th anniversary
The Mariners celebrated the 10th anniversary of 3B Kyle Seager’s major league debut on Wednesday. Seager is the 11th player in Mariners history to have played at least 10 seasons with the club. Seager would have liked a better day at the plate — he was hitless with two strikeouts.
Appeal hearing
Seattle LHP Hector Santiago is expected to have his appeal of a 10-game suspension for using a grip-enhancing foreign substance heard on Thursday, manager Scott Servais said.
Santiago became the first player disciplined under MLB’s crackdown on grip-enhancing foreign substances.
