NEW YORK — The Bronx said goodbye to John Sterling on Monday afternoon. By evening, the Yankees made sure his most famous words were the last ones echoing through Yankee Stadium.
Thuuhhh Yankees win.
Aaron Judge put a two-run homer into the right-center bullpen in the first inning. The Yankees’ lineup kept building from there. Trent Grisham doubled twice. Cody Bellinger drove in runs from both sides of a game. Ryan McMahon robbed a line drive. Jake Bird bailed out the starter. And when Lou Trivino walked to the mound in the eighth, the Yankees buried him under six more runs.
New York completed a four-game sweep of Baltimore with a 12-1 victory Monday night before 36,802 fans at Yankee Stadium. The Yankees moved to 24-11 and won for the 14th time in their last 16 games. They outscored the Orioles 39-10 across the four-game set.
A night shaped by loss and lit by tribute
The day began with news of Sterling’s death at 87. Before the first pitch, broadcaster Michael Kay and longtime partner Suzyn Waldman walked to home plate and laid flowers in his memory. The Stadium fell quiet. Then the Yankees played the kind of baseball Sterling spent 36 years narrating.
Judge stepped in against Shane Baz in the bottom of the first. He drove a hanging full-count knuckle-curve into the bullpen in right-center for his 14th home run of the season, the most in the major leagues. Kay called it a Judgian blast on the air. The stadium came back to life.
It was Judge’s sixth first-inning homer of the season. He now has 91 career home runs as a Yankee, trailing only Babe Ruth’s 126 and Mickey Mantle’s 103 in franchise history.
Grisham sets the table, Bellinger and Judge do the damage
Trent Grisham was the architect of the Yankees’ first two rallies. He led off the first inning and drove a double into the gap, setting the table for Judge’s two-run shot that followed moments later.
He came right back in the third. Another double, this time to the wall. He moved to third on a throwing error by the Orioles. Baz wanted no part of Judge with a runner on third and intentionally walked the captain. Then Cody Bellinger hit a sacrifice fly to score Grisham and push the Yankees’ lead to 3-0.
Grisham reached base three times across the first five innings. His underlying metrics had long suggested he was better than his surface numbers. Monday was the game those numbers started catching up.
Schlittler fires hard, survives trouble in the sixth
Cam Schlittler came out throwing. He touched 101.3, 101.1, and 101 mph in his first inning of work, striking out Dylan Beavers to close it scoreless. He hit 101.2 mph again in the third inning, his fifth pitch of 101-plus on the night.
A comebacker struck Schlittler in the back of the knee in the third. Aaron Boone and a trainer came to the mound. Schlittler stayed in. The Yankees’ defense helped him out. Gunnar Henderson had singled, but a 4-6-3 double play ended the inning.
The fourth and fifth innings were textbook. Back-to-back singles in each frame led nowhere. Double plays extinguished both threats.
The sixth turned harder. Schlittler loaded the bases with two outs and, after a mound visit with pitching coach Matt Blake, walked in Baltimore’s only run to make it 3-1. His night ended there.
Jake Bird entered with the bases still loaded. Before he threw a pitch, he was hit with a pitch clock violation. Then he struck out Jeremiah Jackson on three pitches to end the inning.
Schlittler finished with 5 2/3 innings, one run allowed on three hits, six strikeouts, and three walks. He picked up the win and moved to 5-1 on the season.
Dominguez wins the challenge, McMahon wins the inning
The Yankees extended their lead in the sixth through a sequence that required a video review. Jasson Dominguez broke from third on a passed ball and was initially called out at the plate. The Yankees challenged immediately.
Replay showed Dominguez beat the tag. The call was overturned. The run counted. The score became 4-1.
Ryan McMahon followed with an RBI single to left field, scoring Jazz Chisholm Jr. from third base and knocking Baz out of the game. That made it 5-1. Jose Caballero then doubled to push the lead to 6-1 and end Baz’s night for good.
McMahon added a defensive highlight in the seventh. He snagged a line drive off Beavers’ bat to end the inning. It was the kind of play that keeps innings short and arms fresh.
Grisham made his own defensive contribution in the sixth, tracking a fly ball off Adley Rutschman’s bat all the way to the warning track and hauling it in before banging into the wall.
The eighth inning: Judge, Bellinger, Chisholm pile on
With Trivino on the mound in the eighth, the Yankees scored six times to blow the game open.
Chisholm led the inning with a single. Judge came up and drove a two-run single to right. That gave him four RBIs on the night and pushed the Yankees ahead 8-1.
Bellinger then launched a two-run triple that cleared the bases and sent the Stadium crowd home happy. He finished with three RBIs on the night, combining his sixth-inning sacrifice fly with two more in the eighth.
Dominguez added an RBI double to cap the scoring at 12-1. He finished with one run scored and one driven in across three plate appearances.
Judge ended the night 2-for-4 with an intentional walk and four RBIs. Over his past seven games, he is batting .440 with a 1.563 OPS. He has homered in five of his last eight games, 11 of his last 21, and is on pace for 65 home runs over the course of the full season.
Bullpen wraps it up, series numbers tell the story
After Bird stranded three runners in the sixth, the Yankees bullpen closed cleanly. No other Baltimore runner reached scoring position after the sixth inning.
The Orioles finished the game with four hits. Baz fell to 1-3. Baltimore dropped to 15-20 and has now lost four straight to the Yankees dating to this series.
Across all four games, the Yankees outscored Baltimore 39-10. It was a sweep that reflected a growing gap between the two clubs in the AL East.
When the final out was recorded and Sterling’s signature line played over the Stadium speakers, it felt different. The Yankees did not just win Monday. They gave their legendary voice a proper send-off.
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