The New York Yankees have had their issues this season, but power isn’t one of them.
With nine homers in a 13-3 win over the Tampa Bay Rays on Tuesday, New York tied a franchise record set earlier this year. They also finished just one long ball shy of the MLB record of 10, held by the 1987 Toronto Blue Jays.
There have been only four times in MLB history in which a team has hit at least nine homers in a game. The 2025 Yankees have half of them.
Like in their first nine-homer game, the Yankees got started with three consecutive homers in the first inning. Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger and Giancarlo Stanton all took Rays starter Shane Baz deep, with Judge recording his 40th homer of the season.
The Yankees got that hot start after a two-hour rain delay at their leased-out home away from home at Steinbrenner Field.
Bellinger and Stanton both went on to add another homer later in the game. Jazz Chisholm Jr., Ben Rice and Jose Caballero all chipped in as well, with Caballero hitting a second in the ninth to make history.
Across MLB history, there has been only once instance of a team hitting 10 homers in a game, three in which a team hit nine and 23 in which they hit eight.
Funnily enough, as MLB.com’s Sarah Langs notes, Yankees manager Aaron Boone was involved in all three of those nine-homer games. He managed the Yankees’ two this year and hit the first homer in the third game for the Cincinnati Reds in 1999.
The Yankees had that other nine-homer game in their second game of the season, which you may recall because a) poor Nestor Cortes allowed homers on his first three pitches against his old team and b) that’s when the world first started to learn about New York’s torpedo bats. The craze around the torpedo bats quickly faded after the first couple weeks of the season, but they’ve still helped the Yankees enough that they lead MLB in homers by a healthy margin, with 204 compared to the second-place Dodgers 187.
The vibes for the Yankees are a bit worse with this power surge, as they remain five games back from the Toronto Blue Jays for first place in an AL East division they were once strongly favored to win. The Blue Jays won 7-3 against the Pittsburgh Pirates on Tuesday to maintain their lead.
There have been signs the Yankees are turning things around after a brutal month and a half, though, with wins in five of their past six games. They can’t redistribute some of Tuesday’s homers to other games, but they’re certainly a good omen the team is back on the right track.
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